Democratic leaders are supporting illegal migrants and their Fortune 500 employers by criticizing ICE’s detention of 475 suspected unauthorized workers at a Hyundai facility operated by a Korean company in Georgia.
“The Democratic Party of Georgia strongly condemns this week’s ICE raid at the Bryan County Hyundai plant and the increasingly aggressive presence of ICE in communities across our state,” stated Charlie Bailey, the party’s local spokesperson. He elaborated:
These raids are politically-driven scare tactics aimed at intimidating people who diligently work to earn a living, fuel our economy, and enrich the communities throughout Georgia where they reside. The Trump administration’s shift from targeting violent criminals to going after hard-working individuals fails to strengthen Georgia — it is mere political posturing at the expense of Georgia families, businesses, and livelihoods.
The operation on Friday led to the detention of approximately 475 migrants, including over 300 Korean workers. These roles could have been filled by local Americans and their families at reasonable wages.
“Trump promised to target the ‘worst of the worst,’” stated Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a pro-migration Representative from Washington State, originally from India. “Yet his ICE is targeting everyday people, many of whom have legal status or are diligent community members,” she further commented.
“This is no longer about dangerous criminals,” said Rep. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). ” This is about ripping communities & families apart.”
Georgia’s progressively-led AFL-CIO criticized the raid: “Arresting and detaining workers, who face exploitation daily and risk their lives on the job, generates a climate of fear that intimidates workers and their families while increasing workload pressure on their colleagues.”
The local GOP office did not release a statement.
But a local Republican, Tori Branum, wrote on Facebook that she helped trigger the ICE operation:
So I wasn’t going to say anything about this, but let me make it clear. Yes I did report the Hyundai plant to ICE and yes, I did talk to an agent. I also sent him contact info for people that had evidence… No criminal charges have been filed as of yet, and from what I understand there were some working in slave conditions that were brought here against their will allegedly. This isn’t about discrimination, it’s about slave labor and illegal workers.
The Korean workers likely used short-term B-1/B-2 tourist/business visitor visas to enter the country legally before overstaying and illegally working these jobs.
Other workers reportedly were imported by President Joe Biden’s border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, via the quasi-legal welcome policy for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The battery factory in Ellabell, Georgia, is being built for two Korean companies, Hyundai Motor Group and LG Energy Solution Ltd. More than 1,400 people are working at the site.
Hyundai “is a repeat offender,” Jay Palmer, an immigration expert who works with immigration lawyers, told – News. Like other companies, including Mercedes, Kia, and Tesla, Hyundai executives use staffing companies to legally shield themselves as they fly airport migrants to job sites, he said.
The workforce was legally distanced from the companies by a series of subcontractors.
“They push the people [job applicants] to staffing agencies, and then they hire them from staffing agencies, and then think they’re shielded by the law because they have a master service agreement that states [immigration status] is not their responsibility. This is happening in every industry, especially in meat processing plants… It’s just egregious,” Palmer explained.
National media outlets have shown a sour response to the immigration enforcement sweep.
Rolling Stone, for example, wrote:
[Branum] expressed pride in something else: her purported role in causing the raid, which resulted in the arrest of 450 people, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “How do I feel about it? Good,” Branum tells Rolling Stone. “I have no feelings about the law. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”
The raid follows months of strained negotiations between Washington and Seoul over tariffs and investments. In late August, Trump and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met at the White House after Trump suggested on social media that the U.S. might stop doing business with South Korea. That meeting came after both countries agreed on the outline of a deal reached this summer that would have South Korea potentially invest hundreds of billions of dollars in business with the United States.
Minh Nguyen, who manages a Korean barbecue restaurant, read about the raid on Facebook and thought it was fake. As customers and employees trickled in throughout the day, he realized it was real. Nguyen was bracing for the impact it would have on the night’s dinner rush.
“This is really going to affect us,” he said. Neither he nor the restaurant owners are South Korean, he said, yet the restaurant still gets a large influx of diners from Hyundai. Many come in larger groups, including one last weekend of more than 30 people. “Tonight, we’ll find out how bad this is going to be,” he said.
– News has closely covered the illegal use of B-1/B-2 visas to hide the huge inflow of airport migrants from India, Mexico, and Europe into American trucking, technology, and construction industries. The inflow has helped foreign investors create multiple foreign enclaves within the United States where many U.S. laws have not been enforced.
The inflow is part of the establishment’s post-1990 economic policy of Extraction Migration, which seeks to expand Wall Street by importing government-funded consumers, apartment-sharing renters, and wage-cutting workers from developing countries.
Since his first election in 2016, Trump has partly deflated the resulting bubble of cheap labor, thereby boosting Americans’ wages, productivity, and investment.
“We have to get efficient,” Trump told – News in August. He added: “We’ll probably add to [the existing workforce] through robotically — it’s going to be robotically… It’s going to be big. Then, somebody is going to have to make the robots. The whole thing, it feeds on itself… we’re going to streamline things.”
