ICE raid on Hyundai plant alarms South Korea and Asian American communities

SCREEN CAPTURE

Hundreds of Hyundai workers were rounded up by ICE

The ICE raidd last week on the Hyundai plant in Georgia is a punch to the gut for Asian Americans. Hundreds of workers, many of them Korean, were rounded up like criminals. 

This is not just a story for the evening news. This is a cold, hard slap in the face to those Asian Americans who believed that Donald Trump's harsh immigration policies applied to Latinos, not the so-called "model minority."

“Militarized enforcement actions disguised as workplace investigations raise serious legal and moral concerns,” Meredyth Yoon, Litigation Director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. “This raid is among the largest worksite actions in U.S. history, and it cannot come at the expense of individual rights. We have concerns for the impacted individuals, families, and their rights and are committed to understanding the extent to which the U.S. Government and employers have violated rights.”

Georgia House Minority Whip Sam Park called the September 2025 ICE raid on a Hyundai plant a "politically motivated attack" and expressed a sense of "betrayal" shared by Korean Americans.

For so long, Asian Americans have been told to keep our heads down, work hard, and the system will reward us. The lie we believed was simple: "You're not like those other immigrants. The law works for you."

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ICE agents, armed with military-grade weapons, sealed off the site, blocked roads, and surrounded the area with helicopters, drones, and armored vehicles. Witnesses reported that workers were loaded onto buses, had their phones confiscated, and many were pressured to sign documents without legal counsel. Accounts also describe the use of physical force, tear gas, and intimidation tactics. Advocates stressed that these were not workplace checks but military-style operations carried out against civilian workers.

The raid in Georgia shatters that illusion. It exposes the ugly truth: we, too, are vulnerable. The same immigration system that brutalizes others will come for us when it is politically convenient. This isn't an isolated incident; it's a pattern, a tool of a system that promises fairness but delivers abuse. 

The stories coming out of the raid are horrific: heavily armed agents, tear gas, shackled workers, and a climate of fear deliberately created to intimidate and break spirits. Images of the South Koreans shackled at the wrists and ankles shocked and angered South Koreans in the US and in their home country.

“It’s not like these are long-term workers,” said South Korean President Lee Jae Myung. “When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work.”

Lee said a deal had been reached with the US so the South Korean government  chartered an airliner to bring the workers back to South Korea.

Apparently, the angry reaction of the South Korean government was unexpected by the Trump administration as Trump officials realized many of the workers were in the US legally with B-1 visas because of their specialized skills necessary to operate the high-tech battery plant being constructed 

The chartered flight for the South Korean workers was scheduled to depart the US on Wednesday, however, Trump delayed the flight in an effort to defuse the  apparent anger  of the South Korean government. He proposed allowing the Korean workers to remain in the US to continue their work. The South Korean government believed it would be better for the workers to return to South Korea in order to destress from their harrowing experience. The flight is now scheduled for Friday (Sept. 12).

If the US doesn't improve its immigration policies “Establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies,” President Lee  continued. “They will wonder whether they should even do it.”

The entire episode was meant to be a PR stunt for positive headlines as the "biggest ICE operation" and distract from the negative headlines generated by the Epstein files. The ICE raid may turn into an embarassing guffaw for the Trump administration as it tries to save the over 8,000 jobs the battery plant was going to hire. 

Meanwhile, Hyundai's corporate leaders are left confused and questioning the billions of dollars invested, the promises made. It’s a betrayal of trust on a grand, international scale.

Besides the promised jobs, ICE's overzealous raid might adversely affect Hyundai's plans to invest $26 billion through 2028 to expand its manufacturing footprint in the US,  including a new steel mill and a robotics facility, as well as to enhance its auto production. 

For the rest of us Asian Americans, this moment is a reminder that our liberation is intertwined with that of all marginalized communities. The struggle against a broken system is not an "other people's" issue—it is ours.

“We are deeply alarmed by the recent immigration raid at a battery plant in Georgia. Hundreds of immigrants—many of whom are of Korean descent—have been detained, reportedly including US citizens and lawful permanent residents," said members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and Georgia's Congressional delegation.

"Instead of targeting violent criminals, the Trump administration is going after immigrants at work and in communities of color to meet its mass deportation quotas. These senseless actions rip apart families, hurt the economy, and undermine the trust of our global partners. We are closely monitoring the situation and demanding the administration uphold due process for the workers impacted.”

The fight is far from over. It's on us to stand up and say, "Not on our watch." Let the image of those shackled workers be a permanent reminder: an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. The path forward is not to stay silent but to demand a system that honors human dignity, not one that exploits and discards it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news, views and chismis from an AANHPI perspective, follow me on Threads, on X, BlueSky or at the blog Views From the Edge.