US Politics
South Korean workers deported after Georgia Hyundai plant raid return to work with new visas
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Dozens of workers who were deported back to South Korea after being arrested during an ICE raid on a Hyundai factory in Georgia have returned to the plant after having their visas reissued, according to reports.
Around 30 employees have begun work again at the battery plant, owned by Hyundai and LG Energy, after being picked up in early September in what Homeland Security described as its largest ever raid.
However, the incident, during which over 300 South Korean workers were arrested, triggered outrage from the country’s officials, who expressed “concern and regret” over the operation. A search warrant seen by The Independent showed that agents were in fact only seeking the arrests of four workers at the facility, who were all Latino.
Around 180 people who had been working in the U.S. on B-1 business visas have now had them restored, lawyers for the workers confirmed to The New York Times.
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It comes as around 200 of those detained in the raid prepare to file a class action lawsuit against ICE, which alleges racial discrimination, excessive use of force and even human rights violations during the arrests and detention.
“To this day, we still don’t know why we were detained like that. There has been no apology or explanation from the authorities,” one of the detained workers who spoke to ABC News on condition of anonymity.
He added that agents had confiscated their phones and shackled workers around the wrists, ankles and chest.
“Being confined in a space controlled by armed personnel, unable to see what was happening ahead or behind, with no explanations; it was terrifying. I felt utterly powerless,” he told the outlet. “We were treated like dangerous fugitives, not engineers.”
The Independent has contacted ICE, DHS and the White House for comment over the return of the workers and the pending lawsuit.
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ICE agents arrested a total of 475 people on September 4 at the sprawling Hyundai campus in Ellabell, Georgia — roughly 30 miles west of Savannah — as part of an “ongoing criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other serious federal crimes,” DHS said at the time.
However, despite the president hosting his South Korean counterpart Lee Jae Myung just a week prior, the Trump administration did not give its key ally any advance notice of the operation, catching Seoul by surprise.
Trump initially defended the raid, but later changed his tune, saying he had told officials to let the workers stay and then in October added that he was “very much opposed” to the raid.
“They had people from South Korea that made batteries all their lives,” the president said in a Fox News interview that aired on Tuesday, adding that making batteries was “very complicated” and “very dangerous.”
