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SAVANNAH, Ga. — Tori Branum is a Marine Corps veteran, firearms instructor, and Republican candidate for Georgia’s 12th congressional district.
She’s also a proud “America first” supporter of President Donald Trump. On Thursday, as agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security were still carrying out a raid at a Hyundai plant in rural Bryan County, just outside the district Branum is running to serve, she expressed pride in something else: her purported role in causing the raid, which resulted in the arrest of 450 people, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
“How do I feel about it? Good,” Branum tells Rolling Stone. “I have no feelings about the law. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.”
The raid is one of the largest in ICE history, eclipsing a raid at a California cannabis farm that netted some 300 undocumented workers.
Branum says the Hyundai “megasite” — which opened in March and was hailed as a major economic development win for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) — has been the subject of rumors for months that undocumented immigrants were working there or on construction sites within the massive, 2,900-acre complex. Three workers have died during construction at the site.
Aware of safety issues and rumors about undocumented immigrants working there, Branum says she came into contact with a local, Spanish-speaking union worker who had access to the site. The Hyundai plant itself is not union; many workers there are from South Korea and are in the United States on H1-B visas. The South Korean government confirmed to The New York Times that some South Korean workers were detained by immigration agents.
While the plant itself is not union, construction sites at the facility have been staffed by union tradesmen, some of whom have complained about undocumented workers and unsafe conditions.
The union worker who came into contact with Branum “recorded some conversations they had with people,” she tells Rolling Stone. She claims the union worker had discovered that undocumented immigrants were working on construction projects at the plant.
“They were a union member, and the people confided in them because they had helped them win lawsuits over unsafe working conditions,” Branum says. She declined to name the union worker who acted as the informant.
From there, Branum says she reached out to ICE on the agency’s website, and an agent then contacted her.
On Thursday, as agents from ICE, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), Customs and Border Protection, the U.S. Marshals, the DEA, and the FBI were still raiding the facility, Branum took credit for it on Facebook.
“For months, folks have whispered about what’s going on behind those gates now the truth is finally catching up (sic),” Branum wrote on her Facebook page. “I reported this site to ICE a few months ago and was on the phone with an agent.”
The raid began with a masked agent telling workers that DHS had a warrant.
“We’re Homeland Security; we have a search warrant for the whole site,” the agent announced. “We need construction to cease immediately — we need all work to end on the site right now.”
A second video from the plant shows dozens of workers in bright-colored safety vests sitting on the grass and standing around as ICE and HSI agents question them. Overhead, a helicopter operated by the Georgia State Patrol hovered in the air. A state patrol spokesperson tells Rolling Stone the agency’s officers “served in a support function for the perimeter and aviation assets.” A spokesperson for the Bryan County Sheriff’s Office says that agency had no role in the raid. Elected officials in Bryan County did not respond to requests for comment.
In brief comments to local press, Schrank says the raid was a “judicially authorized enforcement operation” and that the agencies “thank the public for all of the thoughts as we conduct this operation exceptionally safely thus far.”
RAIDS LIKE THURSDAY’S have become a common sight in communities across the country amid Trump’s mass deportation campaign. Ostensibly aimed at undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes, the raids have also resulted in the detention and arrest of men and women without criminal histories. Panic and fear have ravaged migrant communities nationwide as masked agents have swarmed workplaces and neighborhoods in search of the “illegal immigrants” that Trump and his supporters like Branum want to see removed.
“This is what I voted for — to get rid of a lot of illegals,” Branum tells Rolling Stone. “And what I voted for is happening.”
The masked immigration agents like those in Bryan County on Thursday — a sight that was once shocking but has become commonplace — were primarily from ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operations division and DHS’ investigative arm, HSI, according to videos reviewed by Rolling Stone. Those agencies and more were deemed guilty by a federal judge of widespread constitutional violations for racially profiling migrants during investigations and operations in Los Angeles and elsewhere.
As masked immigration agents have carried out their operations nationwide, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress have expanded ICE’s budget to hire thousands more agents, giving the agency more money than foreign nations’ entire militaries. New and expanded immigration detention facilities have sprung up across the country, including at a military base in El Paso, the infamous Alligator Alcatraz in Florida, and Louisiana’s Angola Prison. The Trump administration has even explored holding migrants at the original Alcatraz in San Francisco.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has backed the administration’s claims that it can send undocumented immigrants to third-party countries to which they have no ties. Migrants from Mexico and South and Central America have been sent to Rwanda and Eswatini, prompting warnings from human rights groups about unsafe conditions in those countries.
As Trump’s mass deportation plan has ramped up, members of the military have been increasingly conscripted into both immigration enforcement and local law enforcement operations. Along the U.S. southern border with Mexico, the Trump administration has created three new “national defense areas.” The special designation of these zones allows members of the military to detain migrants — a practice typically reserved for local and federal law enforcement agencies. The military’s role in detaining migrants caught at the southern border is being challenged in court.
On Tuesday, two federal courts ruled that the Trump administration’s use of the military for immigration and domestic law enforcement violated multiple laws. In California, Trump’s use of the National Guard and the Marines during protests over immigration raids in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the military from domestic law enforcement operations, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer sided with the state of California in its lawsuit against the Trump administration, writing in his opinion that National Guard members and Marines violated the act by assisting multiple federal agencies during immigration and drug raids throughout the state.
When National Guard Maj. Gen. Scott Sherman warned that employing the guard to help with riot control or detain protesters was a likely violation of Posse Comitatus, DHS chief Gregory Bovino questioned Sherman’s “loyalty to the country,” according to Breyer’s opinion.
In New Orleans, a panel of federal appeals court judges found that the Trump administration “improperly invoked” the Alien Enemies Act in its immigration efforts. Citing the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime law, Trump’s administration sent hundreds of migrants to the dangerous CECOT prison in El Salvador without due process, based on the administration’s claims the men were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Two of the three judges for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Trump administration did not provide sufficient evidence “that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred” by the Venezuelan government or Tren de Aragua members. A third judge, who was appointed by Trump, wrote a 131-page dissent disagreeing with his two colleagues.
The same day, Trump announced that U.S. forces had killed 11 people on a boat that he claimed was being piloted by Venezuelan drug traffickers. For months, the Trump administration has been building up the U.S. military’s presence in the southern Caribbean, including off the coast of Venezuela. In all, seven warships and a nuclear submarine are either in the region or en route, Reuters reported, bringing the total number of sailors and marines in the area to 4,500.
As Trump has expanded military operations at the southern border and off the coast of Venezuela, he’s also sent in the troops to American cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., all while threatening — or “offering,” in Trump’s words — to send the National Guard to places like Chicago, New Orleans, and San Francisco to tamp down on crime. (All forms of crime, including violent crimes, are down across the country from a spike in 2020, according to data from more than 95 percent of the nation’s law enforcement agencies that was compiled and released last month by the FBI.)
As summer turns to fall, Trump is deploying the military into wars of his own creation both at home and abroad.
Whether it’s sending the National Guard into Los Angeles to back up immigration agents there, into Washington, D.C., to supposedly fight crime, or having masked immigration agents cast a dragnet for undocumented immigrant workers like those in Georgia on Thursday, Trump supporters like Branum have largely backed the president has he has continued to expand the presence of the military and federal law enforcement into American life.
“I don’t have a problem with it,” Branum says.
As news of Thursday’s raid spread, Branum began receiving threats for reporting the Hyundai plant to ICE. Her Facebook message requests are filled with “a lot of hate,” she says. But she’s not backing down.
Just before 9 p.m., she posted a photo of herself lying in bed, holding a modified, AR-15-style rifle with a laser scope. “I’m kinda curious what that was [that] you said in my inbox,” Branum wrote.
