A South Korean worker who witnessed a massive immigration operation at a car factory in Georgia has told the BBC of panic and confusion as federal agents descended on the site and arrested hundreds.
The man, who asked to remain anonymous, was at the factory which is jointly owned by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 475 people, including 300 South Korean nationals, with some being led away in chains.
He first became aware of the Thursday morning raid when he and his colleagues received a deluge of phone calls from company bosses. Multiple phone lines were ringing and the message was to shut down operations, he said.
As news spread of the raid, the largest of its kind since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, panicked family members tried to contact the workers.
They were detained and they left all their cell phones in the office. They were getting calls, but we couldn't answer because [the office] was locked, he said.
According to US officials, some workers tried to flee including several who jumped into a nearby sewage pond. They were separated into groups based on nationality and visa status, before being processed and loaded onto multiple coaches.
Some 400 state and federal agents had gathered outside the sprawling $7.6bn factory complex, which is about half an hour from the city of Savannah, before entering the site at around 10:30 on Thursday.
The 3,000-acre complex opened last year and workers there assemble electric vehicles. Immigration officials had been investigating alleged illegal employment practices at an electric vehicle battery plant that is being built in the compound.
The operation ultimately became the largest single-site immigration enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security investigations, officials said, adding that hundreds of people who were not legally allowed to work in the US were detained.
BBC Verify has been reviewing footage posted on social media and apparently filmed inside the battery plant, showing men lined up in a room as an agent from Homeland Security told them they needed to cease all work on the site immediately.
The worker, who spoke to the BBC and is legally entitled to work in the United States, expressed that he was shocked but not surprised by the immigration operation. He noted that the detained workers were primarily employed by a contractor installing production lines, while some of those arrested were from head office in Seoul conducting training.
The man believes that most workers had some legal right to be in the US, but were on the wrong type of visas or their right to work had expired.
Following the raid, Hyundai and LG Energy Solution stated that they were fully cooperating with the authorities and had paused construction to assist in the investigation. They also clarified that none of those detained were directly employed by Hyundai Motor Company.
As the impact of the raid reverberates through the local community, concerns about its implications for US-South Korean relations and future investments grow. Governor Brian Kemp has lauded the factory as the largest economic development project in Georgia's history, which now faces scrutiny from recent events.
