Unews World
A chartered plane is set to leave South Korea on Wednesday to retrieve hundreds of South Korean nationals detained in an immigration raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia, though some have indicated they may stay in the United States and fight charges their attorney says are unwarranted.
About 300 South Korean nationals were among the 475 people detained Thursday in a raid by Homeland Security Investigations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officials on a construction site in the town of Ellabell, where the South Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solution are jointly building a battery plant.
The incident has strained relations between the U.S. and South Korea, a key ally in Asia that has pledged hundreds of billions in U.S. investment as part of tariff negotiations. It has also drawn attention to the difficulties foreign companies face in obtaining U.S. visas for their employees even as President Donald Trump presses them to expand U.S. manufacturing and transfer technology.
The government of Japan, another key U.S. ally, said Tuesday that three Japanese nationals were also among those detained. According to Migrant Equity Southeast, an immigrant rights advocacy group based in Savannah, U.S. officials also detained workers from Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday that he felt a “profound sense of responsibility” for the safety of South Koreans, extending his “deepest sympathy” to those who “must have been greatly shocked by this sudden incident.”
“I hope that there will never again be an unjust infringement upon the activities of our people and companies in pursuit of the shared development of South Korea and the United States,” Lee, who met with Trump at the White House just weeks before the raid, told a Cabinet meeting.
“Our government will move quickly, through close consultations with the United States, to advance reasonable institutional improvements so that similar cases do not occur again,” he said.
Visa troubles
A spokesperson for Korean Air told NBC News on Tuesday that a chartered plane would leave for Atlanta on Wednesday in South Korea.
Seoul and Washington are “conducting detailed conversations” to arrange for the detained South Korean nationals to voluntarily return home “as soon as possible,” the South Korean foreign ministry said Tuesday.
Ministry spokesperson Lee Jae-woong said the government was making its “utmost effort” to enable them to leave the U.S. by Wednesday local time, hours after the chartered plane arrives. Because of changes in time zone, the plane will land in the U.S. the same day it leaves South Korea.
“Once all preparations are complete and the departure time is confirmed, we will announce the detailed plan,” Lee said.
The foreign ministry also said it was continuing to work with U.S. officials “to address visa difficulties faced by Korean businesspeople.”
Before the raid last week, the ministry said, there had already been dozens of meetings with members of the U.S. House and Senate, congressional staff and related figures, and officials from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, the federal government and academia. The ministry said it had raised the issue “whenever there were opportunities to meet with key U.S. officials.”
“In particular, we emphasized to major U.S. figures that such visas are essential for the short-term stay of Korean professionals who are needed for the initial operation of factories and for training local staff when our companies expand to the U.S.,” it said in a statement.
Sarah Park, president of the Korean American Coalition, said the detained workers should not be blamed for their visa situation.
“The Hyundai-LG plant required highly specialized subcontractors and technicians to move the project forward,” she said Monday at a news conference in Savannah. “Visas were needed, but they were not granted at the scale required. Everyone from the companies to government leaders understood this reality.”
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