ATLANTA — Buses carrying workers from South Korea who were detained last week in an immigration raid at a battery factory were traveling Thursday from a detention center in southeast Georgia to Atlanta, where a charter plane was waiting to take them home.
More than 300 Koreans were among about 475 workers detained during last week’s raid at the battery factory under construction on the campus of Hyundai’s sprawling auto plant west of Savannah. South Korea’s foreign ministry has said that a Korean Air Boeing 747-8i that arrived in Atlanta on Wednesday will depart at noon Thursday with the workers on board.
The workers had been held at an immigration detention center in Folkston, 285 miles (460 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta. South Korea’s Foreign Ministry confirmed that U.S. authorities have released the 330 detainees – 316 of them Koreans – and that they were being driven by bus to Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, where they will board a charter flight scheduled to arrive in South Korea on Friday afternoon. The group also includes 10 Chinese nationals, three Japanese nationals and one Indonesian.
South Korea’s President Lee Jae Myung called Thursday for improvements to the United States’ visa system, saying Korean companies will likely hesitate to make new investments in the U.S. until that happens.
Lee said during a news conference that Korean and U.S. officials had a back-and-forth discussion over whether the detainees had to be handcuffed while they traveled by bus to Atlanta – something the Koreans “strongly opposed.” He said there was also a debate over whether they would be leaving under “voluntary departure” or deportation.
While those discussions were ongoing, U.S. officials started to return the detainees’ belongings. Then, however, “everything suddenly halted,” Lee said, adding that they were told that was due to instructions from the White House.
“President Trump had directed that the (detainees) should be allowed to return home freely and those who didn’t want to go didn’t have to,” he said. “We were told that, because of that instruction, the process was paused and the administrative procedures were changed accordingly.”
A South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic process, said Trump had halted the process to hear from South Korea on whether the Koreans should be allowed to stay to continue their work and help train U.S. workers or should be sent back to South Korea.
Lee said during his news conference that the U.S. gave the detainees a choice between staying and going home. Ultimately, one South Korean national who has relatives in the U.S. chose to stay, Lee said.
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Kim Tong-Hyung reported from Seoul.
