South Korean workers detained during a massive immigration raid on a Hyundai facility in Georgia will be returned to South Korea on a chartered flight, President Lee Jae Myung’s office said Sunday.
Federal and immigration agents arrested 475 people on Thursday — mostly South Korean nationals — while executing a judicial search warrant as part of a criminal investigation into alleged unlawful employment at the facility.
“Negotiations for the release of the detained workers have been concluded,” a presidential spokesperson announced Sunday. “Only the administrative procedures remain, and once they are completed, a chartered flight will depart to bring our nationals home.”
More than 300 South Korean nationals were detained, according to the spokesperson.
The spokesperson added that South Korea will “push forward measures to review and improve the residency status and visa system for personnel traveling to the United States.”
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, President Donald Trump denied that the incident had strained ties with South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy and a key U.S. ally in Asia.
“We have a great relationship with South Korea,” he said.
Trump added that “ICE was doing right, because they were here illegally. But we do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained, so that they can do it themselves.”
In post on Truth Social, he called on foreign companies to “please respect our Nation’s Immigration Laws.”
“Your Investments are welcome, and we encourage you to LEGALLY bring your very smart people, with great technical talent, to build World Class products, and we will make it quickly and legally possible for you to do so,” Trump wrote. “What we ask in return is that you hire and train American Workers. Together, we will all work hard to make our Nation not only productive, but closer in unity than ever before.”
The U.S. raid, part of the Trump administration’s escalating crackdown on immigrants, was the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security.
A sea of agents from HSI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies showed up Thursday to the site in the town of Ellabell where Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, a battery company based in Seoul, are jointly building a plant next to the manufacturing facility for electric vehicles.
LG Energy Solution said Saturday that 47 of its employees were detained, 46 of them Korean. Another 250 personnel from “equipment partner companies,” most of them Korean, were also being held, it added.
The raid came just 11 days after a summit between Trump and Lee at the White House, where South Korean firms pledged $150 billion in U.S. investments. In July, Seoul pledged another $350 billion in U.S. projects in an effort to reduce Trump’s threatened tariffs, which he later set at 15%.
