A year after the Georgia raid, the claims begin

More than 300 South Korean workers detained in last year’s raid at the Hyundai–LG battery-project site in Ellabell, Georgia, are seeking damages from the federal government. Lawyers have begun filing Federal Tort Claims Act administrative claims with nine agencies—a required pre-suit step, not a lawsuit, settlement or finding that the allegations are true. The claims put a formal liability process around the operation, which detained 475 people. CNN, CBS Atlanta, SBS News

The filings turn last year’s diplomatic flashpoint into a test of the raid’s conduct. Workers say they were shackled, denied clear explanations or interpreters, pressured to sign papers they could not read, and left with lost wages, confiscated belongings and psychological harm. A separate claim by Alfredo Fajardo Melgarejo, a Colombian worker, alleges agents used excessive force during his arrest. DHS said the operation was conducted under judicial search warrants in an investigation of alleged unlawful employment practices and other federal crimes; those competing accounts have not been adjudicated. WTOC, Korea Times, More raid context: Wikipedia

A judge orders a check before warrantless arrests

A federal judge has barred immigration agents in Southern California from making warrantless civil arrests without first determining that the person is likely to escape before a warrant can be obtained. The preliminary injunction in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin applies across the Central District of California. It requires an individualized, pre-arrest probable-cause determination—not an assumption that unlawful status alone makes someone likely to flee. KESQ/City News Service, ACLU of Southern California

The court also required agents to write down the particular facts behind any escape-risk finding. Judge Maame E. Frimpong found the plaintiffs were likely to show that the government had an unlawful policy, enjoined reliance on a Todd Lyons memo insofar as it treated unlawful status as sufficient, and declined to stay the order pending appeal. The case concerns warrantless civil arrests, not every immigration-enforcement stop or the separate Southern California litigation over alleged racial profiling. *Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin* court order

An Ecuadorean politician’s rushed removal

The United States deported José Serrano after a three-member immigration appeals panel reversed a Miami judge’s May decision blocking his removal to Ecuador because of a risk of torture. The New York Times reports that the Board of Immigration Appeals acted less than a day after DHS made its written argument, and Serrano was placed on a charter flight within hours—leaving his lawyers no time to seek federal-court review before he left. The New York Times, El Universo

Serrano, a former interior minister, had been found ineligible for asylum but granted deferral of removal after the immigration judge found his torture fears credible. Ecuador has charged him in connection with the 2023 killing of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio; Serrano denies involvement and calls the case political. He is now held in Ecuador’s El Encuentro maximum-security prison. His lawyers say guards stripped and filmed him there, while Ecuadorian officials have denied mistreatment. Infobae / EFE

Around the system

• The New Orleans ICE office’s region has the nation’s second-highest reported arrest rate relative to its noncitizen immigrant population. WWNO and its Gulf States Newsroom partners, using Deportation Data Project records and Census population data, reported more than 45,000 arrests in the office’s Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee area of responsibility since January 2025—about 670 arrests per 10,000 noncitizen immigrants, behind only San Antonio, Texas. Their reporting also finds that local-jail transfers account for a substantially larger share of arrests in Mississippi and Alabama than in Louisiana. WWNO

• “Mega-master” immigration hearings are drawing renewed scrutiny in Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon. GBH reported that the Justice Department has been grouping sometimes more than 100 cases in a single docket; lawyers and court watchers raised concerns about rushed notices, remote proceedings and the consequences of missing a hearing. The Justice Department said reducing the court backlog while handling cases fairly and lawfully remains a priority. GBH, OregonLive

• After federal agents raided a regular day-labor gathering spot in Woodside, Queens, New York, workers told Documented they stopped coming to look for jobs. Witnesses said ICE detained about eight men at General Hart Playground on September 1, the second reported raid there in three days; two days later, the outlet found the normally busy street nearly empty. Documented

• Santa Ana, California, has moved to bar city employees from taking outside work that involves federal immigration enforcement. The City Council unanimously adopted a policy covering work such as investigating, arresting, detaining, transporting or deporting people for ICE or its contractors. A second vote is required October 6. LAist

• ICE arrested a truck driver at a commercial-vehicle inspection station in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. FreightWaves reported that the arrest came amid planned enforcement at weigh stations and inspection checkpoints involving immigration officers, transportation inspectors and state police. A joint DOT-DHS announcement described that plan. FreightWaves

• Associated Press body-camera footage gives a rare account of a workplace raid at a snack-food factory in Cato, New York. The report says federal authorities made 57 arrests, debated what records to seize and when to release employees who were U.S. citizens; it also says a lawsuit filed this week alleges that authorities exceeded their search warrants. Associated Press

• A personal account of being held and questioned about books and magazines after arriving at Miami International Airport offers a narrow view of one border encounter. Thomas Kennedy, a naturalized U.S. citizen, wrote that CBP held him for about two hours and scrutinized his reading list. This is his account, not independently corroborated trend reporting. Miami New Times