Detained South Korean workers are heading home, officials say

 

WASHINGTON-Hundreds of South Korean workers detained during a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia will soon return home, officials with President Lee Jae Myung’s office said.  

United States Immigration agents detained about 475 people, including more than 300 Koreans, at an under-construction battery facility 30 miles northwest of Savannah on Sept. 4. Federal officials said the workers violated an array of immigration laws, including some who illegally crossed the U.S. border and others in the country on tourist visas that do not allow them to work.  

South Korea’s Presidential Chief of Staff Kang Hun-sik said in televised remarks on Sept. 7 that negotiations with the U.S. had concluded, and the workers would fly home after completing additional administrative procedures. The workers will fly to South Korea on a chartered plane, Hun-sik said. 

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.  

The raid on the HL-GA Battery Company plant was the largest single-site workplace enforcement operation in Department of Homeland Security history, officials said. Video released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement showed shackled workers being escorted onto buses.  

Federal officials said during a Sept. 5 news conference the operation was primarily focused on criminal violations of employment laws, not on immigration action.

In the days after the raid, South Korea’s president vowed to bring the workers home and warned that the rights of the country’s citizens “must not be unduly violated."

Democratic members of Congress from Georgia and the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus said they were “deeply alarmed” in a Sept. 6 statement.  

“Instead of targeting violent criminals, the Trump administration is going after immigrants at work and in communities of color to meet its mass deportation quotas,” wrote the group of 20 lawmakers.