“We assumed something was going to happen”

Updated on Tuesday, September 9, 2025

South Korea and the U.S. have reportedly reached a deal to release more than 300 South Korean nationals who were arrested last Thursday in an ICE raid at a Hyundai plant near Savannah. The raid captured nearly 500 workers in total, with others from Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador, and Venezuela.  

As part of the deal, the South Koreans will be returned home via charter flight. 

“After the dust settles, the charter flight leaves, and people are released, the needs of those left behind will continue for days, weeks, and months,” said Meredyth Yoon, an attorney with Asian Americans Advancing Justice–Atlanta.  Next week, she said, advocates and lawyers are—pending ICE approval—planning to go directly to the Folkston ICE Processing Center, where workers are being detained, to give a presentation on legal options for those remaining in custody.

At a press conference in Savannah on Monday, local groups said they were supporting detained workers and their families through fundraisers and enlisting volunteers to help with everything from legal support to translation.

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Elizabeth Galarza knew something was off on Thursday afternoon when she first saw videos of Georgia State Patrol vehicles outside the Ellabell battery plant, before the immigration raid even began. 

“We assumed something was going to happen,” said Elizabeth, who’s the publisher of Pasa La Voz Noticias, a Spanish language community news outlet based in Savannah. There had been rumors about a potential operation for days, but she never thought it would be one of this scale. “Some people had already known something was happening, so they stayed home.”

A total of 475 people, many of them Korean nationals as well as Latino workers, were rounded up at the construction site of a Hyundai and LG Energy Solution car battery plant in Ellabell, just outside of Savannah, according to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). The raid was described as the “largest single site operation in HSI history” and was conducted with ICE, the FBI, DEA, ATF, IRS, and Georgia State Patrol. Most of those arrested are being held at the Folkston ICE Processing Center. No one has yet been charged.

On Friday, Elizabeth said, people were struggling to make sense of what had happened. She said she was told that many of those who had been detained had legal status. “How come, if they had everything, they had a Real ID, they had everything in place, why did they take them?”

Pasa La Voz, a nonprofit with a team of six dedicated to covering LatinX communities in Georgia and South Carolina, reaches tens of thousands of readers through its social media accounts. The publication is also a Pivot Fund grantee, along with 285 South, and takes a “community-first” approach to journalism, focused on empowering “our LatinX community by uplifting their concerns, accomplishments, and voices that are often unseen in traditional media.” Elizabeth says it’s not been easy. “We get a lot of hate messages. People are threatening us.” 

In the wake of the arrests at the Ellabell battery plant, her focus has been  connecting the loved ones of those who were detained, with the information and resources they need.

While Elizabeth spoke to 285 South by phone, the line was interrupted multiple times with incoming calls and messages. 

“The thing is that everyone comes to us for everything,” she explained. “It’s so much for us, and we send them to different organizations.” But just connecting and coordinating people, and going through all the messages, “it also takes time.” She’s been referring people to other groups like the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights and Grow Initiative Georgia.

“It’s just been one thing after another,” Elizabeth told 285 South. “Last night, when I finally got home around 10:30, almost 11, I just, I didn’t eat all day, but I wasn’t even hungry.” 

As a community journalism outlet, Pasa is constantly navigating reporting the news and the needs of her community. “I’m dealing with people who have left their children with a babysitter and they don’t know what to do…babysitters that kept the babies there because the moms didn’t come home,” because they were arrested, she said. 

Pasa La Voz wasn’t new to covering conditions for workers building the plant – their reporters had been in touch with workers for months. Last September, Pasa reported on how many of them had not been paid, and this past spring, the newsroom covered workplace injuries and accidents at the site.

Elizabeth said what happened on Thursday was a far cry from what this administration had originally promised – that immigration enforcement would be focused on targeting criminals. 

“475 people at once in one day at work…They’re just going for the easier target, and that’s people working.”