South Korean workers prepare class action suit after Georgia ICE raid

Nearly 200 South Korean engineers detained at the Hyundai-LG Energy Solution battery plant in Georgia in September intend to sue Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) over claims of wrongful arrest, racial profiling and human rights abuses.

Latest developments: The legal action follows the Sept. 4 operation in which federal agents detained hundreds of workers, including over 300 South Koreans, in what officials called “the largest, single site enforcement operation” in Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) history. Though Trump said late October that he was “very much opposed” to the raid and offered detained workers the option to remain in the U.S., just one accepted. Two weeks after he and South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met and announced resolution of tariff and security disputes, no written agreement has surfaced, with holdups tied to Seoul’s push for authorization to construct a nuclear-powered submarine. The delayed launch costs Hyundai roughly 300 billion won ($211 million) monthly as the stalled tariff agreement hurts auto exports.

Why this matters: Detainees have described harsh conditions during their week at a Folkston detention center: “pods” packed with 60 to 80 people, inadequate meals of apples, meat gruel or ham-and-cheese sandwiches and guards who allegedly made racist gestures mocking Asians. “We just want to correct the record, because even now, we’ve never received neither an apology nor an explanation,” one engineer, identified only as Mr. Kim, told ABC.

Before his October meeting with Trump, President Lee told Bloomberg the raid “caused severe trauma for the workers” and cautioned that “without taking measures to ensure the safety and rational treatment of these workers, there is a high possibility that factory construction in the U.S. may be significantly postponed.” For Korean Americans, the episode has become what Mark Keam, president of the Korean American Institute, described to USA Today as a reckoning with “perpetual foreigner syndrome,” declaring “to say there is a sense of betrayal is an understatement.”

Broader implications: The September raid exposed contradictions in U.S. policy as Washington pursues South Korea’s $350 billion manufacturing commitment while lacking appropriate visa pathways for Korean technical personnel. Internal company documents from August 2023 showed LG Energy Solution had built systematic methods to circumvent visa limitations, with workers trained to present themselves under travel authorization rather than employment permits and counseled to withhold job-related information from customs agents, revealing the regulatory holes that precipitated the crisis.

Seoul, for its part, has launched a “full-scale investigation” into potential human rights abuses.