Immigration Raid At Site Of $4B EV Battery Plant Leads To 450 Arrests, Halts Construction
Federal agents raided the sprawling site of a $4.3B battery factory in Georgia on Thursday, halting construction and arresting roughly 450 people for immigration-related infractions.
Agents from multiple federal agencies descended on Hyundai’s 3,000-acre campus west of Savannah, which includes an electric vehicle manufacturing facility and an adjacent under-construction battery plant. It is the latest escalation in President Donald Trump’s efforts to launch what his administration has described as the largest deportation program in history.
The raid targeted the development site. Operations at the existing factory, which employs roughly 1,200 people and has been touted by elected state Republicans as a driver of economic growth, weren’t interrupted, a spokesperson for the plant told The Associated Press.
Hyundai partnered with LG Energy Solution to develop and build the battery factory, which was announced in 2023 and is expected to open sometime next year. It is unclear how Thursday’s raid, which stopped construction, will impact the development timeline.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the raid was led by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which the spokesperson said “executed a judicial search warrant as part of an ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes.”
DHS said it was supported in the operation by the Department of Labor, FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Customs and Border Protection, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, IRS and Georgia state police.
The majority of those detained are South Korean citizens. South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement that it was dispatching diplomats from Washington, D.C., to Georgia to address the raid.
“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,” Lee said, according to NPR.
The ATF’s Atlanta office posted pictures of the raid to X and said the raid led to roughly 450 arrests.
Today, @ATFAtlanta joined HSI, FBI, DEA, ICE, GSP and other agencies in a major immigration enforcement operation at the Hyundai mega site battery plant in Bryan County, GA, leading to the apprehension of ~450 unlawful aliens, emphasizing our commitment to community safety. #ATF pic.twitter.com/su6raLrLu6
— ATF Atlanta (@ATFAtlanta) September 4, 2025
The two governments reached an agreement Sunday to release most of the detainees and fly them back to South Korea, The New York Times reported.
Hyundai’s Georgia plant, which the carmaker calls Metaplant America, is designed to build up to 50,000 electric vehicles a year. It opened earlier this year and is forecast to support more than 12,000 employees by early next decade, Bloomberg reported.
Hyundai also committed an additional $20B to U.S. investment in March, including at the Georgia facility. It boosted that promise to $26B in August.
The company said in a statement that it was monitoring the situation and gathering details about what happened during the raid. Hyundai said it believed that none of its direct employees were detained as part of the operation.
Chris Susock, Hyundai’s chief manufacturing officer for North America, is taking over governance of the existing electric car factory and the under construction battery facility, the company announced Friday night. It is also opening an internal investigation to ensure that all of its subcontractors are in compliance with federal regulations.
“Hyundai has zero tolerance for those who don’t follow the law,” the South Korea-based carmaker said in a statement.
HL-GA Battery Co., the joint venture building the battery factory, told The Associated Press that it was fully cooperating with law enforcement and had paused construction to assist their work.
The joint venture didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday morning.
Deportations reached a new high in August, with an average of 1,500 people detained and removed from the U.S. each day.
Last month, federal agents raided a New Jersey warehouse owned by Prologis, the world’s largest industrial developer, leading to 29 immigrant detentions.
Bill Anderson, the CEO of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Georgia, said Thursday’s raid and others like it had exacerbated what was already a challenging development landscape.
He said that ABC presses its members to use E-Verify, the government’s employment eligibility tool, but said the trade group's members would prefer that the Trump administration create a visa system that allows those in the country without the proper paperwork to stay and work.
More than a third of general contracting firms across the country said they have been impacted by ramped-up immigration enforcement in a recent survey by the Associated General Contractors of America and the National Center for Construction Education and Research.
The DHS spokesperson said Thursday’s raid was evidence that the Trump administration was committed to protecting jobs.
“This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy, and protecting workers from exploitation,” the spokesperson said.
Jarred Schenke contributed to this story.
UPDATE, SEPT. 5, 8:05 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with an additional statement from Hyundai.
UPDATE, SEPT. 8, 11:28 A.M. ET: This story has been updated to reflect that the detainees are being released and sent back to South Korea.
