Legal workers got caught up in ICE's biggest raid. Korean Americans haven't forgotten. [View all]

Source: USA Today

Nov. 8, 2025, 6:01 a.m. ET


POOLER, Georgia – Daniel Lee's fried chicken, with its spicey-sweet glaze, regularly drew hungry Korean workers from a nearby Hyundai plant into his restaurant, 92 Chicken. That was, until a massive immigration raid at the battery plant two months ago left Lee stunned and his business reeling.

Federal agents handcuffed, chained and detained more than 300 Korean workers in an operation President Donald Trump later said he fully opposed. The workers were flown home after a few days in immigration detention, but the effects of the raid continue to ripple out – from the tables at Lee's restaurant, to Hyundai headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, to Trump's White House.

The high-profile raid of a major global Fortune 500 company that had been aggressively recruited to Georgia infuriated many Korean Americans. According to Pew Research, some 1.8 million people in the United States trace their roots to South Korea, a nation that had long thought of itself as America's equal.

And it raised existential questions for Lee's business and for Korean Americans nationwide who didn't imagine that people here lawfully would be targeted by ICE, or that the Trump administration would pick a fight with a country that had invested billions in the U.S. economy.

Read more: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/11/08/korean-americans-foreigners-biggest-ice-raid-hyundai/86950317007/