Hundreds of South Korean nationals arrested in an immigration raid last week were en route to the airport in Atlanta where they will leave for Seoul later Thursday, the South Korean foreign ministry said, after their flight was previously delayed on what the ministry said were orders from President Donald Trump.
More than 300 South Koreans — 307 men and 10 women — were detained in the Sept. 4 raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia, the ministry said, one of whom has decided to remain in the U.S. rather than agree to “voluntary departure.” The 316 others will be on the flight to Seoul, along with 14 employees of South Korean companies from other Asian countries: 10 from China, three from Japan and one from Indonesia.
The workers were released from the Folkston ICE Processing Center in rural Georgia at 2:18 a.m. ET, the foreign ministry said, and were being driven several hours to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport where a plane sent by the South Korean government is waiting for them.
The Korean Air plane is scheduled to leave Atlanta at noon ET and arrive in Seoul on Friday around 4 p.m. local time (3 a.m. ET).
South Korean officials originally hoped the plane would leave Atlanta as early as Wednesday afternoon local time, shortly after it arrived from Seoul. But the foreign ministry said its departure was likely to be delayed “due to circumstances on the U.S. side,” and an airport spokesperson later said the charter flight had been canceled.
At a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington on Wednesday, South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun learned that Trump had ordered the suspension of the repatriation process in order to discuss with South Korea whether its detained nationals — all of them skilled workers who were helping set up an electric vehicle battery plant — should remain in the U.S. to continue their work rather than be sent home.
Cho told Rubio that it would be better for them to return home first and then re-enter the U.S. “since these individuals were already in shock and are exhausted,” a South Korean government official said.
The official said that the U.S. agreed to repatriate the South Koreans and that Trump had instructed that they be transported to the airport without physical restraints such as handcuffs, in a departure from standard U.S. practice.
Images of South Koreans being shackled at the wrists and ankles have caused outrage in South Korea, a key U.S. ally in Asia that has pledged hundreds of billions in U.S. investment as part of tariff negotiations. The raid came weeks after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung reinforced that commitment at a meeting with Trump at the White House.
“We believe that President Trump’s consideration in this regard stems from the deep bonds formed between the two leaders at the successful South Korea-U.S. summit, as well as the consistent position our government has maintained on this detention issue,” the South Korean government official said.
Lee said all but one of the 317 detained South Koreans had elected to fly home.
“Each person was allowed to choose, and the U.S. government said essentially, ‘If you want to go, you may go; if you want to stay, you may stay,’” Lee said at a news conference in Seoul marking his 100th day in office.
The raid has raised concerns about the potential impact on U.S.-South Korea relations, though Lee said his government had “not considered it to that depth yet.”
He said the incident could make South Korean companies more hesitant to invest in the U.S., where they have long sent employees on a temporary basis to provide training or assistance in areas where U.S. expertise is lacking.
“If this is not allowed, companies will inevitably worry: ‘If setting up factories in the U.S. brings endless restrictions and difficulties, should we even proceed?’” Lee said.
What happened?
The South Korean nationals were among the 475 people federal and immigration agents arrested in the raid on a construction site in the town of Ellabell, where the South Korean companies Hyundai and LG Energy Solution are jointly building an electric vehicle battery plant.
U.S. officials, who said the arrested people were working or living in the country illegally, have described the raid as the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of Homeland Security Investigations, a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. No criminal charges have been filed.
Of the detained South Koreans, 47 were employed by LG Energy Solution and the rest were hired by subcontractors. Hyundai, South Korea’s largest automaker, said none of its direct employees were detained.
Most of the detained South Koreans either were engineers or they worked in after-sales services and installation, said Charles Kuck, an Atlanta-based immigration attorney who is representing at least seven of them. He said they were in the U.S. under various visa programs that South Koreans and other foreign nationals have long used to do business in the country in the face of U.S. bureaucratic delays and murky regulations.
Sarah Park, president of the Korean American Coalition, said Monday that the detained workers should not be blamed for the challenges companies face trying to secure the proper U.S. visas for employees who are key to getting new facilities up and running.
James S. Kim, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea, said Wednesday in an interview in Seoul: “I wish that Americans in America would be a little bit more sympathetic to what the Koreans have witnessed. And as long as they do that, I think the two countries can work together to kind of mitigate what had happened and move forward.”
What’s behind the raid?
Federal authorities showed up at the Hyundai-LG plant to execute a judicial search warrant in connection with what they said was a criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices.
According to the warrant, agents were authorized to seize employment records and immigration documents, as well as ownership and management records related to the construction site. Authorities were also looking for four people, but the reasons the federal government was specifically interested in them remain under seal.
On Sunday, U.S. and South Korean government officials reached a deal to release the workers from immigration custody and return them to their home country.
Consulate officials and other South Korean officials met with those detained at the Folkston ICE Processing Center over the weekend, Meredyth Yoon, a litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta, which has been assisting detainees and their families seeking legal help, told NBC News on Tuesday.
Yoon said that, as part of the deal, most of the South Korean nationals had agreed to “voluntary departure,” avoiding formal deportation orders.
She said that about 175 of the remaining detainees — who hail from Guatemala, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, Ecuador and Venezuela — remain in immigration detention and that her organization is working to connect the affected families to aid.
