A federal judge has approved an $11.5 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by Mexican engineers and technical professionals who say they were recruited to work for Hyundai and Kia in Georgia, only to be put to work on the factory floor instead. The settlement covers more than 600 workers who came to the United States on TN visas, and it resolves claims that they were threatened with deportation if they tried to find another job or complained about their working conditions.
U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May granted the $11.5 million settlement, according to CBS News Atlanta, closing out a legal fight that named Kia Georgia, Hyundai Mobis, the staffing agency Allswell, and Georgia-based staffing firm SPJ Connect as defendants. The lawsuit alleged that plaintiffs, who were recruited for technical positions at Hyundai and Kia, were subjected to a bait-and-switch scheme once they arrived in the United States, with altered job responsibilities putting them to work on the factory floor rather than in the engineering roles they had been promised. The case was originally filed in federal court in the Northern District of Georgia in late 2022 by six Mexican workers, including named plaintiff Isidro Arellano, and accused the defendants of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act by failing to pay overtime and of violating federal and state racketeering statutes, according to court filings reviewed by PacerMonitor.
From University Classrooms to the Assembly Line
Arellano was recruited while studying at Universidad Tecnológica de Torreón in Mexico. After arriving in West Point, Georgia, he was assigned to manual assembly line work — lugging heavy steering columns and installing bumpers for more than 60 hours a week — instead of the professional engineering role he says he was promised, per Bloomberg. He was later terminated after complaining about the mismatch between what he was promised and what he was given, and he went on to join the federal class action.
Arellano told CBS News Atlanta that TN workers can take action against employers and win justice, adding that all workers have rights regardless of their country of origin. The plaintiffs claimed they were threatened with deportation both for trying to find another job and for complaining about working conditions, according to the lawsuit. The defendants have denied all wrongdoing, and CBS News Atlanta reported it reached out to Kia Georgia and Hyundai Mobis for comment on the judge's order, saying it would update the story if either company responded.
Legal Team and Structural Vulnerabilities
The workers were represented by the binational migrant rights organization Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, working alongside attorneys from Georgia law firms Radford Scott LLP, Beal Sutherland Berlin & Brown LLC, and Hall & Lampros LLP, per WABE. The TN visa, a temporary classification that allows certain professionals to work in the United States in specific fields, ties workers directly to a single employer under regulations established in 1994 under NAFTA and continued under the USMCA. Legal advocates say that structure means workers risk deportation or loss of legal status if they try to leave a bad job, leaving little room to push back against alleged mistreatment.
One co-plaintiff, Heber Zapata, found a rare way out. After his employment at Hyundai Mobis, Zapata successfully applied for a U.S. visa designated for human trafficking victims, which allowed him to remain legally in the country, obtain a green card, and move into a quality control technician role in Texas, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Court filings and investigative reporting also indicated that recruiting agencies and staffing brokers coached Mexican candidates through visa interviews and submitted hiring letters containing fictitious U.S. job descriptions to the State Department, according to the same Bloomberg report.
Part of a Larger Pattern in Georgia's Auto Industry
The lawsuit emerged amid heavy public investment in Georgia's automotive sector, including a record $1.8 billion state incentive package awarded to Hyundai in 2022 for an EV plant near Savannah that was promised to bring 8,100 direct jobs, per Bloomberg's reporting. National TN visa issuance has also climbed sharply over the past decade, rising from 9,548 in 2013 to 33,361 in 2022 before reaching 15,672 in 2024 for USMCA professionals, according to USAFacts.
This settlement lands against a backdrop of broader scrutiny of foreign labor practices at Georgia auto facilities. Last September, federal authorities detained approximately 450 foreign workers during an ICE raid at a Hyundai construction site in Bryan County, an operation that drew pushback from state lawmakers over worker rights and economic stability. Separately, federal prosecutors in June wrapped up final sentencing in Operation Blooming Onion, one of the largest guest-worker fraud and forced-labor prosecutions in Georgia history, which targeted a ring that exploited H-2A agricultural workers.
