Georgia Communities Defend Workers After ICE Raid

FEATURING EDUARDO DELGADO -  Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted the largest ever workplace raid in the US on September 4th. More than 500 federal agents descended in a military-style operation on a Hyundai EV battery plant in the town of Ellebell in south eastern Georgia, and carted off 475 people. 

CNN reports that many of those arrested had valid work permits and when they offered their paperwork to ICE agents, the agents marked them as unauthorized workers and arrested them anyway. The Department of Homeland Security claims all workers arrested were undocumented. 

About 300 of the workers are South Korean and are being flown to South Korea as part of a diplomatic deal with the U.S. The rest are largely Latin American. 

Eduardo Delgado is the Civic and Advocacy Coordinator at Migrant Equity SouthEast in South Georgia. His organization is working closely with families impacted by the raid, including raising funds for them. He spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about what happened and how the public can support workers.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Tell me first what the situation was like. This is a relatively rural part of the state. I cannot imagine what it looks like to have a military style operation with 500 essentially armed agents of the state descending upon this, this campus, this work campus. How has the community been responding? What has the scene been like in that area? 

Eduardo Delgado: Absolutely. so yes, as you mentioned, Ellabell is a very rural community. The main town is comprised of a gas station and the Dollar General. So this is an extremely small community where, an operation like this wasn't really expected in the large number that we saw. 

Migrant Equity Southeast has been monitoring reports from community at Hyundai for a few months now, ever since the beginning of the second Trump administration. We have been in contact with many of the senator's office, Senators Warnock, and Ossoff to you know make sure that they pay attention to this issue, to make sure that community is protected. 

But when it came down to it, you know a lot of the folks that we were counting on let us down, a lot of folks in the government. And so, what the community is feeling right now, essentially is abandonment. They're, they're feeling persecuted. They feel hated and right now they're scared.