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 said 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, the man said panicked family members tried to contact the workers.
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 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.
The raid, dubbed by officials Operation Low Voltage, targeted an electric battery plant which was being built on the same site as an existing Hyundai car factory.
ICE has released footage of the raid showing federal agents arriving in armoured vehicles and lining up workers outside the factory, with some shown chained together before being loaded onto coaches.
The worker we spoke to said he had sympathy for those who had been detained, but he said a crackdown was not a surprise under the Trump administration. Their slogan is America first, and if you work in America legally, you won't have an issue, he said.
In a joint statement released after the raid, Hyundai and LG Energy Solution said they were co-operating fully with the appropriate authorities regarding activity at our construction site. To assist their work, we have paused construction.
Hyundai also said that based on our current understanding, none of those detained is directly employed by Hyundai Motor Company.
