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. “Once the procedures are complete, the chartered plane will depart to bring our citizens.”
U.S. officials were not immediately available for comment.
The incident strained ties with South Korea, the world’s 10th-largest economy and a key U.S. ally in east Asia.
The 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 are jointly building a battery plant next to their manufacturing facility for electric vehicles.
