Federal operation at Savannah-area Hyundai plant nets 475 detentions

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include information from the federal warrant executed during the Thursday operation and to include a statement from Hyundai Motor Group. The raid on Hyundai’s Savannah-area electric vehicle plant was part of a lengthy investigation into the unlawful hiring of illegal aliens at the industrial site that Georgia officials […]

The newly built HL-GA battery plant at the Hyundai Metaplant in Bryan Co. on March 13, 2025. Justin Taylor/The Current

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to include information from the federal warrant executed during the Thursday operation and to include a statement from Hyundai Motor Group.

The raid on Hyundai’s Savannah-area electric vehicle plant was part of a lengthy investigation into the unlawful hiring of illegal aliens at the industrial site that Georgia officials had promised would create thousands of jobs for locals, federal officials said Friday.

Operation Low Voltage resulted in more than 475 people detained — more than 300 of whom were Koreans — for alleged immigration violations, while federal agents executed a criminal search warrant to gather evidence at the battery plant jointly owned by Hyundai Motor Group and LG, two of South Korea’s largest companies.

According to the search warrant, federal agents were seeking evidence including employment records from the lithium battery factory that could reveal illegal immigration and hiring practices at the HL-GA Battery Company LLC and five other companies identified by federal officials as subcontractors. Federal officials had identified four people with Hispanic names as part of the basis for the warrant signed by a magistrate judge in the Southern District of Georgia.

Steven Schrank, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations for Georgia and Alabama, said the raid at the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America was the largest single site enforcement operation ever carried out by the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement division.

Schrank told reporters that while some of the detained workers illegally crossed the U.S. border, others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working at the $7.6 billion site where Hyundai Motor Group and an interconnected group of suppliers are building vehicles.

Hyundai broke ground at the site two years ago after Georgia promised billions of dollars in tax credits and tax abatements if the world’s largest carmaker met its goals of creating more than 8,000 jobs at an average salary of approximately $58,000.

As of March, Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America, the legal entity that operates the site, reported that it had 1,200 people currently employed, not counting Koreans, and was operating one shift at the plant. At that time, the battery facility was not operational and remains under construction.

No criminal charges had been filed Friday. Federal officials said the majority of workers detained this week have been sent to Folkston, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s detention center in Charlton County.

The governor’s office responded to the raid by saying that state agencies remain committed to the rule of law. “All companies operating within the state must follow the laws of Georgia and our nation,” said spokesman Carter Chapman.

There was no immediate comment from Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr.

The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul.

Asked about the raid on Friday, Trump said that the people arrested were immigrants who entered the country illegally. “We had as I understand it a lot of illegal aliens,” he said. “Some not the best of people. But we had a lot of illegal aliens working there.”

South Korean officials told The Wall Street Journal that many of the Koreans detained worked for LG Energy were at the metaplant on a business trip and had visas that allowed them to train employees in Georgia.

In addition to Koreans, foreign nationals from Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela and Mexico had been detained, according to Migrant Equity Southeast, a Coastal Georgia migrant workers’ organization.

Thursday’s operation was more complex than other ICE enforcement actions that have occurred since President Donald Trump took office earlier this year.

The raid involved 10 federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service’s criminal investigation unit, according to Margaret Heap, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.

“This was not a immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks, and put them on buses,” Schrank said. “This has been a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence and conducted interviews, gathered documents and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant.”

The Current has previously reported on a pattern of workplace deaths and injuries affecting both American and foreign workers at the metaplant, including the death of a Korean technical worker in March, as well as a pattern by key Hyundai suppliers of not reporting those incidents to the federal agency responsible for workplace safety.

HMGMA, the legal entity that negotiated nearly $2 billion in state tax abatements and credits with Georgia, has previously said that it was not responsible for the actions of its supplier companies on the site.

In response to the ongoing federal investigation, Hyundai Motor Group said Friday that its North America Chief Manufacturing Officer Chris Susock would assume governance of the entire EV site in Bryan County. “We will conduct an investigation to ensure all suppliers and their subcontractors comply with all laws and regulations,” the company said in a statement.

“We are reviewing our processes to ensure that all parties working on our projects maintain the same high standards of legal compliance that we demand of ourselves. This includes thorough vetting of employment practices by contractors and subcontractors,” the statement said.

This article first appeared on The Current and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. The Current is an independent, in-depth and investigative journalism website for Coastal Georgia.