Workplace safety issues at Georgia’s Hyundai plant may have led to Ice raid

A week after a federal immigration raid on a South Korean battery plant under construction in Georgia, concerns over the economic fallout have reverberated between the United States and South Korea. The detention of more than 300 Korean workers at the Hyundai-LG worksite in Ellabell has created uncertainty both about the future of the project and those like it in Georgia, as well as the exact reasons for the aggressive and unusual workplace raid.

One reason that may have driven immigration officials to take actions that threaten an important trade relationship and a politically and economically sensitive development in one of the poorest parts of the US: workplace safety issues that led to three deaths in two years.

The investigation began in March, DHS officials said, a time that coincides with the second of three fatal workplace accidents at the site. It is conceivable that the presence of undocumented workers might have contributed to workplace safety culture issues, if people were not free to make complaints to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration out of fear of deportation.

In April 2023, 34-year-old construction worker Victor Javier Cajija Gamboa fell to his death at the HL-GA Battery Company site after his safety line was severed. In March, Sunbok You died there in a forklift accident. A Bryan county sheriff’s office report described You as “laying behind the forklift” with “a blood trail approximately 10-15 feet long”.

Two months later, Allen Kowalski, 27, was crushed to death by a load falling from a forklift.

A report from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution noted that construction injuries and deaths had far outpaced industry averages for a project of the size of the battery plant. A story by the Savannah Morning News noted that 91 ambulance calls had been made from the construction site over a 20-month period.

Hyundai and LG were asked whether workers at this or other sites owned by LG or Hyundai are free to report workplace safety issues without reprisal, and if they believe that workplace safety issues – specifically the deaths of three employees at the worksite over the last two years – contributed to the decision by Homeland Security Investigations to seek a search warrant and round up HL-GA site workers.

“All of the personnel we directly hired for HL-GA Battery Company are legally employed, and we will work with our suppliers to apply the same standards,” replied Phil Lienert, a spokesperson for LG Energy Solution, a partner in the battery plant.

“The health and safety of everyone at our facilities and construction sites is our highest priority,” he added. “Our direct employees as well as our subcontractors understand our commitment to safety and occupational industrial safety and health policies. Together with our subcontractors and relevant authorities, we have fully supported thorough investigations to determine the root cause of the incident and to help prevent such accidents in the future.”

A spokesperson for DHS would not confirm but did not deny that safety issues contributed to the investigation. But he did express skepticism about claims made by Tori Branum, a Republican and former US marine running for Congress in Georgia, that her calls of complaint to Ice prompted the action.

“I don’t know who that is,” said Ice spokesperson Lindsay Williams. “The executive summary that I’ve been briefed on doesn’t have her name in it at all … it has nothing to do with our investigation.”

The raid by Homeland Security Investigations and other agencies ended with 475 people in detention, of which 320 were Korean nationals, most of whom had a B-1 visa or entered with a visa waiver, said Charles Kuck, an immigration attorney representing four of the detained workers. With regard to other detainees, fear of reporting safety problems because of the possibility of deportation is “a plausible” issue, he said.

When Ice made arrests, “there were a lot of Mexican, Guatemalan, Chilean, Colombian, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan people”, said Vanessa Contreras, a spokesperson for Migrant Equity Southeast. “And of course, a lot of these people were documented. A lot of these people did have valid work permits. A lot of these people were here legally. But of course, that doesn’t matter, because regardless of you having documentation or not, we have seen prior that even if you follow the quote-unquote law, it doesn’t matter, you’re still going to be treated a certain way.”

Incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act spurred more than $55bn in private investments by Korea in the United States, according to the Korea Economic Institute of America, a Washington DC thinktank funded by the South Korean government. The country’s US investments in recent years have fallen in a band beginning around Detroit and ending around Savannah, Georgia, passing through America’s Rust belt and the union-busting states of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia.

Georgia has had a particularly strong relationship with South Korea over the years, a product of careful economic diplomacy and a wave of Korean immigration. The third-most-spoken language in most states in either Chinese, French or German. In Georgia, it’s Korean.

“Georgia has always worked to maintain a strong relationship with the Republic of Korea and Korean partners like Hyundai, stretching back 40 years to the establishment of Georgia’s trade office in Seoul,” said the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp. “We are thankful they are reiterating their commitment to adhere to all state and federal laws, just as we remain committed to not allowing this unfortunate incident to undo the decades of mutually beneficial partnerships we’ve built together.”

Georgia has drawn more than $21bn in South Korean manufacturing investment across 20 projects since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022.

“There is no relationship fallout,” said Trip Tollison, president and CEO of the Savannah Economic Development Authority. “It is important to note, that those that were detained were not full-time, permanent employees and were here to install sophisticated equipment and train employees on that equipment. HL-GA Battery JV has told us they are committed to the Savannah facility and that they are focused on the release of the detainees.” Tollison emphasized the temporary nature of the employees because the terms of their visas did not allow them to have extended working trips.

The main Hyundai car plant has created more than 2,800 jobs, and the expected number of jobs between Hyundai and 21 suppliers is 15,716, on a capital investment of $10bn, Tollison said.

“That has not changed,” he said. “We have not done an economic impact study yet but will complete one sometime in the near future.”

Georgia’s political leaders insist that everything is going to be fine, even though Donald Trump’s immigration policy is sharply at odds with the interests of foreign investors.

South Korea’s political leaders insist everything is not fine, while largely eliding over worker safety issues and the employment practices of its subcontractors that may have prompted the raid in the first place.

Thursday morning, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung said companies are likely to be hesitant about investing in the United States moving forward.

“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a factory or install equipment at a factory, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” he said.

“If that’s not possible, then establishing a local factory in the United States will either come with severe disadvantages or become very difficult for our companies. They will wonder whether they should even do it,” Lee added.

South Korea and US trade negotiators agreed in July to a 15% tariff on South Korean goods – in lieu of punitive tariffs that had been on the table – in return for a pledge to invest $350bn in new investments in the United States. South Korean business leaders announced plans to invest an additional $150bn in American enterprises after a summit in August. Hyundai alone announced its intent to invest an additional $26bn in American manufacturing only three weeks ago.

The scope of those investments, from artificial intelligence to shipbuilding and nuclear energy, is vast. So is the scope of the interest South Korea’s new president has aggressively pursued for American investment to light up South Korea’s waning economy.

Thursday, Hyundai chief executive officer José Muñoz said the detentions, and the departure of their joint venture’s employees back to South Korea today, will set back completion of the battery plant.

“This is going to give us minimum two to three months’ delay, because now all these people want to get back,” Muñoz told reporters in Detroit on Thursday. “Then you need to see how can you fill those positions. And for the most part, those people are not in the US.”