If you drove into Ellabell, Georgia, on State Route 204 – past a few double-wides, a couple of churches and a Dollar General – you’d never guess a massive automobile complex sits just a few miles away.
The town is small, unincorporated and best known for canoeing on the Ogeechee River or teeing off at Black Creek Golf Club. Until last week, its biggest claim to fame was being chosen as the site of Hyundai’s first fully electrified vehicle and battery manufacturing campus in the United States, a project state leaders promised would bring 8,500 jobs and transform the rural economy.
The narrative cracked when, in the largest immigration raid of President Donald Trump’s second term, nearly 500 federal, state and local officers descended on the Hyundai–LG battery plant construction site and arrested 475 people.
Agents with Homeland Security Investigations said the majority were Korean nationals, though others were from different countries. Some, officials said, had crossed into the US unlawfully; others had overstayed visas; still others were on visa waivers allowing entry for tourism or business but do not permit employment.
As officers, masked and carrying rifles, fanned across the sprawling site, they ordered construction workers to line up against walls, demanded dates of birth and Social Security numbers and began sorting who would be cleared to leave and who would be loaded onto buses bound for the Folkston ICE Processing Center, more than 100 miles away.
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