4 days ago
9
Economy|Georgia ICE Raid Netted Workers With Short-Term Business Visas
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/business/economy/hyundai-raid-worker-visas.html
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Last week’s immigration operation at a battery plant highlighted a tactic that companies use to bring in foreign workers to establish new operations.
By Lydia DePillis and Hamed Aleaziz
Lydia DePillis is an economics correspondent who has reported on immigration issues. Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy.
Sept. 12, 2025, 12:00 a.m. ET
Almost 500 people were detained during a raid of a Georgia battery plant owned by two South Korean manufacturers last week, the largest immigration enforcement operation at one location in the history of the Department of Homeland Security.
But in at least one instance, officials admitted a worker was employed legally and forced him to leave the country anyway, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.
The Times obtained internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest records for 11 of the detained workers. Six entered the country with B1 or B1/B2 visas, which are issued for business trips of up to six months. Four entered through the visa waiver program, which allows travel for 90 days. In one case, the worker’s status was unclear. The records stated that all but one of the 11 were working unlawfully at the time of the raid, but did not provide details about why.
In the one exception, agents said that although the worker “has not violated his visa,” the local ICE field office director “mandated” that he be considered someone who was voluntarily departing the country. The file noted that he worked for the South Korean engineering firm SFA, which did not respond to a request for comment.
Two-thirds of the people arrested on Sept. 4 were South Koreans, and nearly all of them were flown back to their home country this week. They were expected to land in Seoul on Friday afternoon local time — only after sitting in limbo for 24 hours while President Trump told his government to consider letting them to stay and train American workers, South Korean officials said.
“What ICE is doing here is illegal, and people should be held to account,” said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta immigration lawyer who is representing some of those who were detained. “If we’re turning from ‘let’s enforce the law against people who violate the law’ to ‘let’s enforce the law against everybody regardless of their legal status,’ I think we’ve changed the kind of country that we’ve become.”
