Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mirror US: Trump warned Pentagon name change makes US a ‘laughing stock’ to both allies and enemies

Posted on by
Reply

The President aims to lean into ‘warrior ethos’ after having campaigned on promises of ‘uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars’

The Trump administration is moving forward with plans to rename the Department of Defense to the Department of War after President Donald Trump first floated the idea on Monday, according to a Fox News report. A White House official confirmed the plan to The Mirror US on Thursday.

The decision marks a stark U-turn from the president’s campaign promises in 2024 to pursue peace, and from his frequent criticisms of former President Joe Biden for driving the U.S. “closer to World War III than anybody can imagine.”

“As President Trump said, our military should be focused on offense – not just defense – which is why he has prioritized warfighters at the Pentagon instead of DEI and woke ideology. Stay tuned!” White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told Reuters this week, referring to programs aimed at increasing diversity, equity and inclusion. The Trump administration has not revealed the reasons it believes the department’s name constitutes “woke ideology.” It comes after a lip reader revealed the chilling 3-word promise that Donald Trump whispered into Vladimir Putin’s ear at their Alaska summit.

The move follows a string of similar name-changing decisions by the Trump administration as a measure of projecting the president’s stance on specific policy issues. In January, Trump issued an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”. He also referred to his controversial July domestic spending bill as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which in recent days his administration has attempted to rebrand as the “working families tax cut.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also ordered the renaming of certain military vessels that previously bore the names of civil rights leaders, such as the USNS Harvey Milk. Last month, he renamed his conference room the “W.A.R. Room.” Hegseth has often proven to be concerned with the outward appearance of elements of his department, having even ordered a makeup studio to be installed inside the Pentagon and dictated which colors of nail polish are acceptable to be worn by Army soldiers.

Though restoring the name would require congressional action, the White House is reportedly exploring alternative methods to enact the change, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The decision to rename the Pentagon comes amid a broader push by Trump, Hegseth and their coalition to restore a “warrior ethos” to the federal government and America as a whole. It has included a purge of top military leaders whose views do not align with the president’s agenda.

“As Department of War, we won everything. We won everything,” Trump said last month, referring to the War Department established by Congress in 1789 to oversee the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. “I think we’re going to have to go back to that.”

The administration has also sought to ban transgender individuals from voluntarily joining the military and remove those who are currently serving on the basis of a claim that they are medically unfit. The claim has been described by civil rights groups as false and a representation of illegal discrimination, according to Reuters.

“This is so stupid and it’s going to make us a laughing stock in front of both our allies and our enemies,” one user wrote on X on Thursday.

Posturing the top defense department in the nation in a more aggressive and offensive direction is at odds with promises and statements made by Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.

Trump lobbed frequent criticisms at Biden for the fact that, during his presidency, Russia invaded Ukraine and the conflict between Israel and Hamas was ignited. “(Biden) will drive us into World War III, and we’re closer to World War III than anybody can imagine,” Trump said, according to CNN.

Last August, while endorsing anti-war former Democratic Rep. Tusli Gabbard at a National Guard conference in Detroit, Trump claimed both Democrats and Independents would vote for him because of his plan to end wars. “We’re uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars,” he said of Gabbard’s endorsement. “When I’m back in the White House, we will expel the warmongers, the profiteers … and we will restore world peace.”

“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” Gabbard said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace.”

His decision in June to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities threw several of his most ardent, right-wing supporters into opposition, urging the president and his allies not to engage in foreign conflicts.

Trump, who claimed that he would solve the Russia-Ukraine war before taking office on Jan. 20,” had made little headway by early September in brokering peace between the two nations. He has also dubiously claimed that he has personally ended a handful of global wars during his second term.

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said during his inaugural address. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier. That’s what I want to be: a peacemaker and a unifier.”

It comes after Ukraine warned that Putin has a hit list of FIVE countries that he wants to invade next.

Trump warned Pentagon rename makes US a ‘laughing stock’ to allies and enemies
The President aims to lean into ‘warrior ethos’ after having campaigned on promises of ‘uniting forces to end the endless foreign wars’

https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/trump-warned-pentagon-name-change-1372151

Slate: A Senator Just Unapologetically Declared the U.S. a White Homeland

Posted on by
Reply

America, he says, isn’t an idea—and isn’t for everyone.

A Sitting Senator Just Went Full Mask-Off White Nationalist

On Nov. 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the greatest speeches in American history, the Gettysburg Address. It opened “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

On Tuesday, Eric Schmitt, the junior senator from Missouri, declared that Lincoln was wrong.

“What is an American?” This was the question Schmitt posed at the fifth annual National Conservatism Conference in Washington. His answer is that the nation is fundamentally not based on the idea of equality or freedom or any other ideal. Nor is it accessible to people of all races and religions. It is fundamentally, he told an assembled crowd, a white homeland.

The white Europeans who settled America and conquered the West “believed they were forging a nation—a homeland for themselves and their descendants,” he said. “They fought, they bled, they struggled, they died for us. They built this country for us. America, in all its glory, is their gift to us, handed down across the generations. It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny. If America is everything and everyone, then it is nothing and no one at all. But we know that’s not true. America is not a ‘universal nation.’ ”

The implications of this vision are serious. This is a repudiation of our Constitution and the core of a national identity that includes all its citizens. It means that to be American is not about citizenship at all. “What is an American?” Schmitt asked. It is a white person. America is a white homeland that organically binds together white people of the past, present and future. And its policies must be guided for their benefit if they are to succeed.

“A strong, sovereign nation—not just an idea but a home, belonging to a people bound together by a common past and a shared destiny.”

Schmitt makes clear that the problem of immigration is not that people violate the rules or that the rules are not enforced. It is about immigration per se, about non-Europeans stealing the birthright of the descendants of America’s original white Christian settlers. This includes German settlers like Schmitt’s ancestors, a group at one time considered nonwhite, but not the Black slaves who built much of the country and whose roots here largely predate his own, nor countless other ethnic groups who have made significant contributions to this nation.

“We Americans are the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith,” he said. “Our ancestors were driven here by destiny, possessed by urgent and fiery conviction, by burning belief, devoted to their cause and their God.” Their idol, he declares, is Andrew Jackson. “Their trust was in the Lord,” but their cause was not necessarily more righteous. They destroyed the Native Americans, he claims, because they were superior in strength and perseverance. This is a fascist vision of natural selection favoring the group with racial and cultural superiority.

Make no mistake. This is a revolt against Lincoln, a revolt against the idea of a nation built on the proposition that all men are created equal. “America is not just an abstract proposition,” he repeats over and over, clearly referencing Lincoln. The left, he asserts, is “turning the American tradition into a deracinated ideological creed,” an idea literally stripped of its racial foundation. It is stealing the country from the “real American nation”: the pilgrims, the pioneers and the settlers who “repelled wave after wave of Indian war band attacks” to build this country. “It belongs to us. It’s our birthright, our heritage, our destiny.”

Nonwhite people do appear in his vision, but only as the usurpers of our white nation and its resources. They are the “Indians,” whom he portrays as savages who succumbed to the superior ability of their white destroyers. They are Barack Obama and his supporters, who scorned the white patriots for remembering a country “that once belonged to them.” They are the people tearing down Confederate statues and removing Confederate names from buildings, streets, and forts, turning “yesterday’s heroes into today’s villains.” They are the people behind the “George Floyd riots,” as he describes them, “anarchists [who] looted and defaced and tore down statues and monuments all across the country.”

Here, it is quite clear who constitutes “us” and “them” in this Manichaean vision of the American nation. “When they tear down our statues and monuments, mock our history, and insult our traditions, they’re attacking our future as well as our past,” he said. “But America does not belong to them. It belongs to us. It’s our home. It’s a heritage entrusted to us by our ancestors. It’s a way of life that is ours, and only ours, and if we disappear, then America, too, will cease to exist.”

Even Christianity itself is eclipsed here. Christianity is meaningful only as a marker of the whiteness of the people who embody it. There is no gratitude here, except for the white founders who bequeathed this nation to their biological descendants by achieving its manifest destiny and taking it. There is no obligation here. No grace. No Christian mercy. No reckoning with past crimes, and particularly not with the dispossession of Native Americans or the enslavement of Africans, both of which are literally celebrated.

That conference—despite the protestations of its founder, the Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony—has been promoting blood-and-soil nationalism since its first iteration in 2019. That year, University of Pennsylvania Law professor Amy Wax argued, “Our country would be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.” She worried about our “legacy” population, white Americans, being overrun by nonwhite immigrants who, she said, innately lacked the capacity to adapt to Western culture.

In 2024 the senior senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, gave the keynote speech at the conference. Hawley celebrated Christian nationalism as the core idea animating America. He warned against “cosmopolitans” and “globalists,” both famous tropes for Jews, threatening our country.

This year, Schmitt, a sitting senator, outdid them both. Schmitt opened by reiterating the antisemitic tropes of his senior colleague. America is threatened by the “elites,” he declared, “who rule everywhere but are not truly from anywhere.” This is the “rootless cosmopolitan” trope at the heart of modern antisemitism. They serve “global liberalism” and “global capital” and support mass migration, he continued, a nod to the “great replacement” theory, which blames Jews for replacing white Americans with nonwhite immigrants.

Though he repeats his predecessor’s implicit antisemitism, he went even further with his explicit advocacy of the U.S. as a white homeland.

This speech, and this conference, demonstrates once again that the MAGA coalition’s endgame is about not just fighting illegal immigration, affirmative action, and “DEI.” It is about not just the alleged destruction of nonracial civic nationalism by liberals and their proactive efforts to achieve equity. It is ultimately about a white (Christian) nationalist vision of America that claims ownership of power and resources for white (Christian) Americans alone. All others are here on sufferance and must remember their place as such.

That a sitting U.S. senator should make such a speech without shame or pushback by his party highlights the extent to which it represents where that party now stands.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/09/eric-schmitt-white-nationalism-national-conservatism-conference.html

A Sitting Senator Just Went Full Mask-Off White Nationalist
America, he says, isn’t an idea—and isn’t for everyone.

Sacramento Bee: DHS Announces $6B In Fines for Noncitizens

Posted on by
Reply

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Trump administration have imposed roughly 21,500 fines totaling $6.1 billion on noncitizens who have ignored removal orders. Critics argued that such policies place undue pressure on individuals to leave the country and use misleading incentives that complicate compliance. Meanwhile, DHS and the Treasury Department are actively enforcing the collections while also offering voluntary-departure programs.

DHS rules allow daily fines and limit appeals if noncitizens don’t respond within 15 days. Collections have included tax reporting, private agencies, and refund garnishments.

…

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official stated, “It’s an easy choice: Leave voluntarily and receive a $1,000 check, or stay and wait till you are fined $1,000 a day, arrested, and deported without a possibility to return legally.”

Atta girl, Kristi “Bimbo #2” Noem: Compound their misery by fleecing them and stealing their hard-earned saving!

DHS Announces $6B In Fines for Noncitizens
advertisement

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dhs-announces-6b-in-fines-for-noncitizens/ss-AA1LZgUK

ABC News: 1st jobs report since Trump fired BLS head comes in below expectations

Posted on by
Reply
1st jobs report since Trump fired BLS head comes in below expectations
Only 22,000 jobs were added to the workforce in August, below economists’ expectations, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3%, the highest in nearly four years.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/1st-jobs-report-since-trump-fired-bls-head-comes-in-below-expectations/vi-AA1LWOqf

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. judge blocks Trump administration from ending legal status for Venezuelans and Haitians

Posted on by
Reply

President Donald Trump’s administration is illegally seeking to deport hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans and Haitians to their conflict-stricken nations, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled Friday.

The people affected by the ruling have been living in the United States under temporary protected status, or TPS, granted to undocumented immigrants with no serious criminal record who would be endangered by war, natural disasters or other conditions in their homeland. Trump opposes TPS and contends it has been used to protect members of criminal gangs.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Chen said removing the protections from Venezuelans and Haitians would return them to “conditions that are so dangerous that even the State Department advises against travel to their home countries.”

“For 35 years, the TPS statute has been faithfully executed by presidential administrations from both parties, affording relief based on the best available information obtained by the Department of Homeland Security in consultation with the State Department and other agencies, a process that involves careful study and analysis,” the judge wrote. “Until now.”

He did not say how many immigrants were covered by the ruling, but advocacy groups said it would protect hundreds of thousands from each nation. Chen had previously halted the deportation of 350,000 Venezuelans with TPS status, but the Supreme Court froze his order in May and allowed the administration to seek their deportation.

Friday’s ruling “provides immediate relief to several hundred thousand Venezuelans who should not have been subjected to this lawless policy in the first place,” said their attorney, Ahilan Arulanantham, a UCLA law professor. “Sadly, today’s ruling comes too late for many Venezuelans who were detained and deported under that policy because the Supreme Court allowed it to take effect without giving any reasons. We are hopeful the rule of law will now prevail.”

In Friday’s decision, Chen said Trump’s Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, terminated TPS for both groups of migrants as soon as she took office, with “no meaningful review,” reversing extensive findings and decisions by her predecessors. He said it was the first such action in the program’s 35-year history.

The judge said Noem had made unfounded assertions that “Venezuela didn’t send us their best” but instead sent “criminals.” She referred to Venezuelan migrants as “dirtbags” in a Jan. 29 Fox News interview. Chen also cited Trump’s campaign claims that Haitian migrants were eating household pets in Ohio.

Such statements are evidence that the administration’s actions were “based on racial, ethnic, and/or national origin animus,” said Chen, who was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama.

S.F. judge blocks Trump administration from ending legal status for Venezuelans and Haitians

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/tps-protections-21033502.php

LA Times: Trump looks at taking over New York’s 9/11 memorial

Posted on by
Reply

The Trump administration said Friday that it is exploring whether the federal government can take control of the 9/11 memorial and museum in New York City.

The site in lower Manhattan, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by hijacked jetliners on Sept. 11, 2001, features two memorial pools ringed by waterfalls and parapets with the names of the dead, and an underground museum. Since opening to the public in 2014, the memorial plaza and museum have been run by a public charity, now chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent critic of President Trump.

The White House confirmed the administration has had “preliminary exploratory discussions” about the idea, but declined to elaborate. The office noted Trump pledged during his campaign last year to make the site a national monument, protected and maintained by the federal government.

But officials at the National September 11 Memorial & Museum say the federal government, under current law, can’t unilaterally take over the site, which is located on land owned by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The U.S. government shouldering costs and management of the site also “makes no sense,” given Trump’s efforts to dramatically pare back the federal bureaucracy, said Beth Hillman, the organization’s president and chief executive.

“We’re proud that our exhibitions tell stories of bravery and patriotism and are confident that our current operating model has served the public honorably and effectively,” she said, noting the organization has raised $750 million in private funds and welcomed some 90 million visitors since its opening.

Last year, the museum generated more than $93 million in revenue and spent roughly $84 million on operating costs, leaving a nearly $9 million surplus when depreciation is factored in, according to museum officials and its most recently available tax filings.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, meanwhile, voiced her own concerns about a federal takeover, citing the Trump administration’s recent efforts to influence how American history is told through its national monuments and museums, including the Smithsonian.

The takeover idea comes months after the Trump administration briefly cut, but then restored, staffing at a federal program that provides health benefits to people with illnesses that might be linked to toxic dust from the destroyed World Trade Center.

“The 9/11 Memorial belongs to New Yorkers — the families, survivors, and first responders who have carried this legacy for more than two decades and ensured we never forget,” Hochul said in a statement. “Before he meddles with this sacred site, the President should start by honoring survivors and supporting the families of victims.”

Anthoula Katsimatides, a museum board member who lost her brother, John, in the attack, said she didn’t see any reason to change ownership.

“They do an incredible job telling the story of that day without sugarcoating it,” she said. “It’s being run so well, I don’t see why there has to be a change. I don’t see what benefit there would be.”

The memorial and museum, however, have also been the target of criticism over the years from some members of the large community of 9/11 victims’ families, some of whom have criticized ticket prices or called for changes in the makeup of the museum’s exhibits.

Trump spokespeople declined to respond to the comments.

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when the hijackers crashed jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in southwest Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks. More than 2,700 of those victims perished in the fiery collapse of the trade center’s twin towers.

Trump looks at taking over New York’s 9/11 memorial
President Trump’s administration says it’s looking at ways the federal government can assume operation of the 9/11 memorial in New York City

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-09-06/trump-seeking-ways-to-take-over-9-11-memorial-in-nyc

“Since opening to the public in 2014, the memorial plaza and museum have been run by a public charity, now chaired by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a frequent critic of President Trump.”

In other words, this is just another act of political revenge by King Donald.

CNBC: Dr. Scott Gottlieb reacts to RFK Jr. linking autism to Tylenol

Posted on by
Reply
Dr. Scott Gottlieb reacts to RFK Jr. linking autism to Tylenol
Dr. Scott Gottlieb, fmr. FDA commissioner, joins ‘Fast Money’ with reaction to RFK Jr. implying Tylenol usage is linked to autism, sending Kenvue stock plummeting.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/dr-scott-gottlieb-reacts-to-rfk-jr-linking-autism-to-tylenol/vi-AA1LYTKM

We need to be rid of the road-kill eating bozo with brain worms, RJK, Jr.

Columbus Ledger-Enquirer: Trump Targets ‘Un-American’ Books at Military Academies

Posted on by
Reply

Former U.S. military academy faculty are alleging that Trump-era political pressure has influenced curriculum changes, leading to course cancellations and book removals. Topics deemed “un-American” including diversity and critical race theory, have been especially targeted under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. West Point has canceled gender and race history classes, ended its sociology major, and barred works by controversial authors James Baldwin and Toni Morrison.

Historian Ruth Ben-Ghait wrote, “A small purge was orchestrated, to make sure the Naval Academy fell into line when Trump got back into office and the real purges could take place.”

Ben-Ghait added, “It was a loyalty test for the Naval Academy, and they passed it, but Trump and Hegseth will surely be back for more.”

Identity-focused student groups have been disbanded, and the U.S. Naval Academy reportedly removed hundreds of diversity-related books. Faculty, including Dr. Graham Parsons and Brian Johns (R-CO), warned the purge undermines graduates’ critical thinking.

Administrators removed selected humanities courses and abolished several student clubs, according to reported faculty accounts. A speech policy now requires approval for publications and media, though a civilian law professor has reportedly challenged it as unconstitutional.

Parsons said, “These were brazen demands to indoctrinate, not educate.” Following Parson’s departure, Hegseth said, “You will not be missed Professor Parsons.”

These changes have raised concerns over a cultural shift in military education. Faculty noted similar censorship trends pre-dating the Trump administration, such as canceling a fascism lecture after conservative objections.

Trump Targets ‘Un-American’ Books at Military Academies
More for You

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-targets-un-american-books-at-military-academies/ss-AA1LZkKW

Slingshot News: ‘It’s Actually Difficult’: Trump Admits To His Incompetence, Realizes It’s Hard Being President During Meeting With European Leaders

Posted on by
Reply
‘It’s Actually Difficult’: Trump Admits To His Incompetence, Realizes It’s Hard Being President During Meeting With European Leaders
During a multilateral meeting with European leaders, Donald Trump had a rare moment in which he faced reality and admitted that stopping the Russia-Ukraine War was much more difficult than he thought it would be. “I thought this was gonna be one of the easier ones,” Trump lamented.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/it-s-actually-difficult-trump-admits-to-his-incompetence-realizes-it-s-hard-being-president-during-meeting-with-european-leaders/vi-AA1M0i0S

Associated Press: What to know about a large-scale immigration raid at a Georgia manufacturing plant

Posted on by
Reply

Hundreds of federal agents descended on a sprawling site where Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles in Georgia and detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals.

This is the latest in a long line of workplace raids conducted as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. But the one on Thursday is especially distinct because of its large size and the fact that it targeted a manufacturing site state officials have long called Georgia’s largest economic development project.

The detainment of South Korean nationals also sets it apart, as they are rarely caught up in immigration enforcement compared to other nationalities.

Video released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Saturday showed a caravan of vehicles driving up to the site and then federal agents directing workers to line up outside. Some detainees were ordered to put their hands up against a bus as they were frisked and then shackled around their hands, ankles and waist. Others had plastic ties around their wrists as they boarded a Georgia inmate-transfer bus.

Here are some things to know about the raid and the people impacted:

The workers detained

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.

Some of them worked for the battery plant operated by HL-GA Battery Co., a joint venture by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution that is slated to open next year, while others were employed by contractors and subcontractors at the construction site, according to Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations.

He said that some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the U.S. border, while others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or had entered on a visa waiver that prohibited them from working.

But an immigration attorney representing two of the detained workers said his clients arrived from South Korea under a visa waiver program that enables them to travel for tourism or business for stays of 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.

Attorney Charles Kuck said one of his clients has been in the U.S. for a couple of weeks, while the other has been in the country for about 45 days, adding that they had been planning to return home soon.

The detainees also included a lawful permanent resident who was kept in custody for having a prior record involving firearm and drug offenses, since committing a crime of “moral turpitude” can put their status in jeopardy, Lindsay Williams, a public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Saturday.

Williams denied reports that U.S. citizens had been detained at the site since “once citizens have identified themselves, we have no authority.”

Hyundai Motor Company said in a statement Friday that none of its employees had been detained as far as it knew and that it is reviewing its practices to make sure suppliers and subcontractors follow U.S. employment laws. LG told The Associated Press that it couldn’t immediately confirm how many of its employees or Hyundai workers had been detained.

The South Korean government expressed “concern and regret” over the operation targeting its citizens and is sending diplomats to the site.

“The business activities of our investors and the rights of our nationals must not be unjustly infringed in the process of U.S. law enforcement,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lee Jaewoong said in a televised statement from Seoul.

Most of the people detained have been taken to an immigration detention center in Folkston, Georgia, near the Florida state line. None of them have been charged with any crimes yet, Schrank said, but the investigation is ongoing.

Family members and friends of the detainees were having a hard time locating them or figuring out how to get in touch with them, James Woo, communications director for the advocacy group Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, said Saturday in an email.

Woo added that many of the families were in South Korea because many of the detainees were in the United States only for business purposes.

Raid is the result of a monthslong investigation

The raid was the result of a monthslong investigation into allegations of illegal hiring at the site, Schrank said.

In a search warrant and related affidavits, agents sought everything from employment records for current and former workers and timecards to video and photos of workers.

Court records filed this week indicated that prosecutors do not know who hired what it called “hundreds of illegal aliens.” The identity of the “actual company or contractor hiring the illegal aliens is currently unknown,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office wrote in a Thursday court filing.

The sprawling manufacturing site

The raid targeted a manufacturing site widely considered one of Georgia’s largest and most high profile.

Hyundai Motor Group started manufacturing EVs at the $7.6 billion plant a year ago. Today, the site employs about 1,200 people in a largely rural area about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of Savannah.

Agents specifically honed in on an adjacent plant that is still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.

The Hyundai site is in Bryan County, which saw its population increase by more than a quarter in the early 2020s and stood at almost 47,000 residents in 2023, the most recent year data is available. The county’s Asian population went from 1.5% in 2018 to 2.2% in 2023, and the growth was primarily among people of Indian descent, according to Census Bureau figures.

Raid was the ‘largest single site enforcement operation’

From farms and construction sites to restaurants and auto repair shops, there have been a wide array of workplace raids undertaken in this administration. But most have been smaller, including a raid the same day as the Georgia one in which federal officers took away dozens of workers from a snack-bar manufacturer in Cato, New York.

Other recent high-profile raids have included one in July targeting a legal marijuana farm northwest of Los Angeles. More than 360 people were arrested in one of the largest raids since Trump took office in January. Another one took place at an Omaha. Nebraska, meat production plant and involved dozens of workers being taken away.

Schrank described the one in Georgia as the “largest single site enforcement operation” in the agency’s two-decade history.

The majority of the people detained are Koreans. During the 12-month period that ended Sept. 30, 2024, only 46 Koreans were deported during out of more than 270,000 removals for all nationalities, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Community members and advocates have mixed reactions

Kemp and other Georgia Republican officials, who had courted Hyundai and celebrated the EV plant’s opening, issued statements Friday saying all employers in the state were expected to follow the law.

The nonprofit legal advocacy organization Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta described the raid in a joint statement as “unacceptable.”

“Our communities know the workers targeted at Hyundai are everyday people who are trying to feed their families, build stronger communities, and work toward a better future,” the statement said.

Sammie Rentz opened the Viet Huong Supermarket less than 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from the Hyundai site six months ago and said he worries business may not bounce back after falling off sharply since the raid.

“I’m concerned. Koreans are very proud people, and I bet they’re not appreciating what just happened. I’m worried about them cutting and running, or starting an exit strategy,” he said.

Ellabell resident Tanya Cox, who lives less than a mile from the Hyundai site, said she had no ill feelings toward Korean nationals or other immigrant workers at the site. But few neighbors were employed there, and she felt like more construction jobs at the battery plant should have gone to local residents.

“I don’t see how it’s brought a lot of jobs to our community or nearby communities,” Cox said.

Something’s fishy here — many had 90-day visa waivers but had been for a much shorter time.

This looks like part of a desperate attempt to meet the ghoulish Stephen Miller’s goal of 3000 deportations monthly.

What to know about a large-scale immigration raid at a Georgia manufacturing plant
Hundreds of federal agents descended on a sprawling site where Hyundai manufactures electric vehicles in Georgia and detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals.

https://apnews.com/article/immigration-raid-hyundai-plant-4dd1a6b2ad66d27567b2463c5f3c97bb