Last week’s unprecedented immigration raid on southeastern Georgia’s Hyundai Metaplant campus resonated with force in South Korea, homeland to the automaker and to the bulk of the 475 workers arrested.
But not all the people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have Korean ties. At least 23 of them are men from Mexico, according to the Mexican consulate in Atlanta.
Consulate staff met with many of the men after they had been transferred to the Folkston ICE Processing Center, a South Georgia facility on the cusp of becoming the nation’s largest immigrant detention site .
“People were in shock,” said Rafael Laveaga, consul general of Mexico in Atlanta. They were “working normally” when law enforcement swept in.
Laveaga added that the men were construction workers, employed b