ICE arrests and local concerns pull focus from national politics
Gwinnett County, just north of Atlanta, ranks among the 10 most ethnically diverse counties in the United States. The 2020 U.S. census found the county 30.6% white, 27.8% Black, 23.7% Hispanic, 13.2% Asian and 4.0% multiracial. About 28% of Gwinnett residents were born outside the United States, and roughly half of those are U.S. citizens, according to the census. The census’s diversity index places an 84.9% probability that two randomly selected Gwinnett residents will belong to different racial or ethnic groups.
The Guardian reported that control of the U.S. Senate may come down to the Georgia contest between Sen. Jon Ossoff and U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, and that the state result may in turn hinge on a handful of places where turnout and partisan sentiment are not easily forecast. Republicans hold Georgia’s House chamber by a 10-vote margin. Gerrymandering protects some Republicans, but the vulnerable seats are in places like Gwinnett, the newspaper reported.
Federal immigration enforcement has added new pressure on the county’s immigrant communities. The Guardian reported that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a “shadow surge” of arrests in August under the name “Operation Safe Community.” The agency has detained more than 1,000 immigrants across metro Atlanta, disproportionately targeting immigrant-heavy communities along Buford Highway, Norcross and other parts of Gwinnett County, the newspaper said.
Johanna Park, who was born in Korea and lived much of her life in Argentina and Peru before settling in Gwinnett more than 20 years ago, told The Guardian she is part of an early wave of Korean immigration that built Korean American car dealerships, banks, insurance agencies, supermarkets and restaurants like her own. Park owns Cafe Amico at Suwanee Town Center, one of her three Italian coffee shops in the area, The Guardian reported. Park said she has generally voted for Democrats and has little good to say about the economy or the Trump administration.
“They’re deporting all of the Hispanic people from here, left and right,” Park said. She added: “And not only are they deporting them back to their country, but also they are deporting them to … to south[ern] Africa? I don’t know where … And who’s paying for all of this? You know, probably you and I, with the tax money.” “Illegal immigration has always been a thing, but why are we are so adamant about kicking everybody out when they are the hardest working people here, and they help overall with the economy?” she asked.
The political loyalties of Gwinnett’s Asian American population are not easily categorized. The Guardian reported that the county fields more Asian American Democratic elected officials, such as Akbar Ali in Lilburn, but others, like Soo Hong in Buford, have been elected as Republicans. Vietnamese American voters tend to lean more Republican, while Indian American voters tend to lean more Democratic, the newspaper reported, though neither party fully owns their loyalty.
Park said the divide “will remain, always. It’s deeply rooted. Especially the business owners are mostly pro-Republicans because of the benefits and the tax cuts and what not.” But their children are often splitting with their parents, drawn left alongside the broader trend of highly educated Americans siding with Democrats.
Elliot Kim, general manager of Suwanee Frame & Art, told The Guardian that his parents’ generation of Korean Americans tends to stay Republican and conservative, drawn close to the church. “I’m Korean. My parents live here as well, and typically that generation of Koreans and maybe a little bit younger than them stay pretty Republican and conservative because they stay close to the church. That’s what they relate to. But myself and my brother probably lean a little bit more to the left,” Kim said.
The Guardian situated Suwanee on what it described as a “purple fault line” between football-obsessed Buford, near the Mall of Georgia, to its north and Duluth, where storefront signs alternate between English, Spanish and Korean, to its south. The newspaper also noted that 30 years ago, Suwanee’s town common was a cow pasture, a million-dollar home was a rumor and apartments were the punchline to a joke about Atlanta. Today, the town center is a model of suburban mixed-use development ringed with condominiums, with local property values closer to Boston’s than Atlanta’s and a population that has increased fivefold since 1996.
The county’s growth, rather than national political fights, may be the dominant political force for Gwinnett voters. The Guardian reported that the county has been absorbing more than 10,000 new residents a year, even as housing starts have fallen since the early 2000s boom. The school system is a particular draw: U.S. News and World Report ranked the Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology as the top high school in Georgia and seventh nationally. The county’s public school district is far and away the largest in Georgia, with more than 180,000 students, the newspaper reported.
Kim, a graduate of Gwinnett’s public schools, told The Guardian that he is concerned the school system today is not rigorous enough for his daughter, taking issue with how little homework is assigned and how often students are permitted to retake tests. “I mean the principal was going on and on about how Roberts [elementary school] is award-winning, best in state all this. And I’m like, how are these metrics even being formed here?” Kim said. He added: “I am so unimpressed about what they’re learning, and maybe is that just me getting old and wanting my kids to have the amount of strife that I did going through school.”
Local issues appear to be pulling voter attention away from national fights. State Sen. Adrienne White Carden, a longstanding Democratic political activist who is married to a Gwinnett county commissioner and won a special election earlier this year in Gwinnett by a 51-49 margin, serving in a temporary role until January, told The Guardian that affordability has come up repeatedly while she has knocked on doors.
“I think people are still definitely concerned about the shenanigans that Trump is running, but at the same time, they’re more interested in what’s happening here at home,” Carden said. “You know, costs definitely came up, whether it be gas pump prices or, to be honest, as the wife of a county commissioner, those who knew I was his wife — which was many people — always had a message for Commissioner Kirkland Carden about property taxes.”
Republican state Rep. Matt Reeves represents part of Suwanee along with some points north, according to The Guardian. The newspaper reported that there is little Republican red meat or culture war fodder in his rhetoric, and that he talks about affordability — property tax relief, lowering insurance prices and pushing for a statewide referendum for senior homestead tax exemptions. Reeves held on to his seat in 2024 by 621 votes on 29,003 ballots cast and faces a rematch against Michelle Kang, an attorney and Korean American immigrant, The Guardian reported.
“Here’s the thing in Gwinnett county: we are the battleground. We have competitive seats,” Reeves said. “So I’ve brought my A-game every day for the last two years. And I’ve been saying affordability for at least the last two years, probably even before that, and I’m glad that the national conversation has caught up with that because we’ve got to deliver savings, for our people to have more money in their pocket.”
The diversity of Gwinnett’s electorate is visible at the weekly demonstrations on the green at Suwanee, where about 20 people gathered waving anti-Trump protest signs. “I feel a moral obligation to be out here to be visible,” Kristina Lindsey, a Democratic activist from Suwanee, told The Guardian. “And so that other people who might share the same values as me see that we have the courage to be out here and make some noise.”
Lindsey acknowledged that her neighborhood’s affluence insulated it from some economic pressures. “My neighborhood is kind of in a bubble, I’m just going to say,” she said. “We have money. And so our neighborhood is not as concerned with what’s happening to maybe some people in southern Gwinnett, right? Or the gas prices or our grocery prices, right? … It does not affect us the same way it does someone who’s living paycheck to paycheck and doesn’t have an emergency fund.”
The Guardian’s reporting identified Gwinnett as one of a handful of Georgia counties whose turnout and partisan lean could tip both the state’s U.S. Senate race and the state House of Representatives. With the chamber divided by 10 votes and several Gwinnett-area seats in play, the county’s combination of demographic diversity, sustained population growth and local concerns about affordability places it among the most closely watched battlegrounds in this year’s Georgia midterms.