South Korean workers began returning to a factory in Georgia last month after the State Department reissued their visas, as the Trump administration seeks to undo the damage from a large workplace immigration raid.
About 180 people who were in the United States on B-1 business visas have had them restored, said Kim Min-su, who was among those detained in the raid on Sept. 4 in southern Georgia. Two lawyers representing the workers confirmed that all the B-1 visa holders who were detained — out of 317 South Koreans detained in total — had their visas restored.
At least 30 of those workers have gone back to the battery plant, which is owned by Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, said Mr. Kim, who has surveyed the South Korean ex-detainees in preparation for a class-action lawsuit against U.S. immigration authorities over their detention. His account was corroborated by screenshots and photos shared with The New York Times that show visa renewals for two of the workers.
One person whose visa was revoked on Sept. 27 had it reissued on Oct. 22, the documents show. Another worker asked the U.S. Embassy in Seoul about his visa status and received an email on Oct. 14 stating that his visa was valid.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that U.S. officials had contacted the former detainees individually about their visa renewals and taken steps to ensure that no adverse information related to the Georgia operation remained on their records. The State Department and the HL-GA Battery Company, which owns the plant where the raid happened, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has sought to distance itself from the raid, which came amid its nationwide crackdown on immigration. President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea, where the raid stirred up public anger, said it was a violation of the workers’ rights and would discourage companies from investing in the United States.
The timing of the raid was especially awkward for Mr. Lee, who just over a week earlier had met President Trump at the White House and pledged to invest $350 billion in the United States in return for lower tariffs on South Korean exports.
The detainees who have returned to Georgia are subcontractors or freelancers, as opposed to employees at LG Energy Solution, one of the companies building the battery plant along with Hyundai, said Mr. Kim, 34, an engineer who works for a subcontractor.
Posted by John3262005
3 Comments
>The timing of the raid was especially awkward for Mr. Lee, who just over a week earlier had met President Trump at the White House and pledged to invest $350 billion in the United States in return for lower tariffs on South Korean exports.
I roll my eyes whenever I hear the cope that “it doesn’t matter that Trump appointees are incompetent because he fires them because he’s a leader”. This is the kind of thing that, in any competent organization of any scale, would have resulted in public humiliation followed by executions. Was anyone held accountable for this? Why would anyone risk going back otherwise?
Those workers were expected to return. The factory was 98% complete and only weeks away from starting proper operation. It would be too costly to just abandon the factory.
Also, the core element of hostage release deal was that the companies have to return and complete the factory after the US government sorted out visa issue. That clause allowed the workers to be finally released without being paraded in chains at the airport.
The first time around, it wasn’t to target Koreans specifically (outside of the usual ethnonationalism populist Republicans often like); this was to make a statement against all foreign investment, as well as to remind Dear Leader what type of person his support comes from. It was a hostage crisis, just not in the way most people think of it.
The populist local Republican Party elements who presumably called ICE this still have a beef with the business wing of the Republicans, which is why they took hostages in the first place, so if anything’s stopping them from doing this again it’ll probably be ICE having been told to ignore anything coming out of this town. Question is whether they’ll try killing the workers next instead of getting them deported. I don’t think it’s likely but there’s always that one idiot who hasn’t realized they aren’t going to win and keeps escalating.