Since a huge immigration raid on a Hyundai manufacturing site has swept through nearly 500 workers in southeast Georgia, Rosie Harrison said that her organization’s phones are constantly sounded with panicked families who need help.
“We have individuals who return calls every day, but the list does not end,” said Harrison. She directs an apolitical non -profit initiative called Grow Initiative which links low -income – immigrants and non -immigrant families – to food, housing and educational resources.
Since the raid, Harrison said: “Families have experienced a new level of crisis.”
The majority of 475 people detained during the workplace raid – that US officials called the largest in two decades – were Korean and returned to South Korea. But lawyers and social workers say that many of Non -Korean immigrants have collapsed in the repression remain in legal limbo or are otherwise not counted.
While the RAID started on the morning of September 4, workers almost immediately started calling Migrant Equity Southeast, a local non -profit organization that connects immigrants to legal and financial resources. The small organization of around 15 employees suspended calls for people from Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Venezuela, said spokesperson Vanessa Contreras.
Throughout the day, people have described federal agents who took workers’ mobile phones and putting them in long lines, said Contreras. Some workers have hidden for hours to avoid capture, in air ducts or areas distant from sprawling property. The Ministry of Justice said that some have hidden in a nearby sewer pond.
Off -site people have called the organization to frantically research from where there are dear beings who worked at the factory and who were suddenly inaccessible.
Like many Koreans who worked at the factory, defenders and lawyers representing non-Korean workers taken in the RAID claim that some who were detained had legal authorization to work in the United States.
Neither the Ministry of Internal Security nor immigration and the application of customs responded to requests for comments sent by e-mail on Friday. It is not clear how many people detained during the raid remain in detention.
The lawyer based in Atlanta, Charles Kuck, who represents the Korean and non -Korean workers who have been detained, said that two of his customers were working legally within the framework of the delayed action program for children arrivals, created by former president Barack Obama. One had been released and “should never have been arrested,” he said, when the other was still detained because he was recently accused of driving under the influence.
Another Kuck’s customers were looking for asylum, he said, and had the same documents and work as her husband who was not arrested.
Some even had Georgia driver’s permits, which are not illegally available for the country, said Rosario Palacios, who helped migrant capital in the Southeast. Some families who called the organization have been left without access to transportation because the person who had been detained was the only one who could drive.
“It is difficult to say how they chose who they were going to free up and who they were going to warn,” said Palacios, adding that some who had been arrested had no extraterrestrial identification number and were still not counted.
Kuck said that the RAID is an indication of the continuation of the repression of the administration of President Donald Trump, despite the assurances they aim at criminals.
“The redefinition of the word” criminal “to include all those who are not citizens, and even some who are, is the problem here,” said Kuck.
Many families who called Harrison ‘initiative said their loved ones were the only families in the household, leaving them desperate for the basics such as baby preparation and food.
The financial impact of the RAID on the construction site for a battery factory which will be operated by HL -GA Battery Co. was aggravated by the fact that another massive employer in the region – International Paper Co. – closes at the end of the month, linking 800 other workers, said Harrison.
The growth initiative does not verify immigration status, said Harrison, but almost all the families who contacted him said that their relatives had legal authorization to work in the United States, leaving a lot of confused on the reasons why their parent had been placed in the first place.
“The worst phone calls are those where you have crying children, shouting:” Where’s my mother? “” Said Harrison.
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Riddle is a member of the body for the Associated Press / Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a non-profit national services program that places journalists from local editorial rooms to account for undercurrent issues.
