The Trump administration is still dealing with the international fallout caused by its recent arrest and detention of hundreds of South Korean workers during a raid on a battery plant in Georgia.
After the fierce backlash to the arrests and detention — in reportedly terrible conditions — of over 300 South Korean workers, President Donald Trump issued a statement on social media seemingly referring to the arrests and saying he didn’t want to “frighten off” investment in the United States. A top U.S. diplomat has also expressed “deep regret over the incident,” according to the South Korean government.
But the fallout continues.
South Korea is investigating potential human rights abuses experienced by the workers once they were placed in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week, a spokesperson for South Korean President Lee Jae-yung said Monday. The workers have since returned to Korea on a plane sent to the United States by their government.
“I understand that the government is conducting a more thorough review with the companies to determine whether any human rights violations occurred,” presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung said in a press briefing, Yonhap News Agency reported.
“The foreign ministry is looking at whether our demands were properly addressed, and the companies are also conducting their own reviews, to check whether any measures were insufficient on either the Korean side or U.S. side.”
South Korea’s trade unions have reportedly called for an official apology over the raid and subsequent detentions, and Lee has warned the “bewildering” action could chill future investment in the United States. “We’re in an age of new normal in dealing with the United States,” Lee’s chief of staff said Friday.
Lee also stressed that the arrested workers were only set to be in the United States temporarily in order to help install equipment and set up the battery factory, which was part of a Hyundai plant in Ellabell, Georgia.
“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” Lee said.
The mass arrest of the Korean workers is also shining a light on the poor treatment of people in U.S. immigration detention — often those whose home governments don’t have enough economic leverage to press the issue with the United States.
By contrast, the angry response to the raid from South Korea, a major Asian economic power and U.S. trading partner, has prompted a hat-in-hand Trump response.
“When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other ‘things,’ come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land,” Trump said in a post Sunday on Truth Social.
He added: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!”
Trump and Lee had met only two weeks before the raid, and just a few months ago both countries had announced a loose trade agreement.
The Trump administration did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about the raid, including whether the president’s post was made in reference to it.
Shackled And Jailed
Some 475 people, including over 300 South Koreans, were arrested in the Sept. 4 raid on the Georgia battery plant.
The raid was the largest single-site enforcement action in Department of Homeland Security history, Trump administration officials have said.
The Korean workers were largely in the United States under short-term business visas or a visa waiver program. The Trump administration has alleged they violated the terms of those statuses, though the rules around them are fuzzy and rarely enforced so harshly. At least one person who was arrested had not violated any immigration laws, The Guardian and New York Times reported.
An attorney representing some of the workers later said immigration agents didn’t know there were a lot of Korean workers there. “The Koreans were never part of the plan, which is why they didn’t even bring a single Korean translator with them,” the attorney, Charles Kuck, told MSNBC.
A search warrant for the raid lists only four “target persons,” all seemingly with Hispanic names. The administration has said anyone out of legal status is eligible to be arrested, detained and deported — making no distinction for people deemed public safety threats or other priorities, and emphasizing the importance of so-called “collateral” arrests.
The treatment of the Korean workers once they encountered ICE has drawn outrage.
One arrested worker recounted agents pointing guns at workers during the raid, and those arrested were shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles. In detention, the workers were initially kept in a large, crowded cell, and were confronted with moldy bedding, bathrooms that were not private, and temperatures so cold they wrapped themselves in towels to stay warm, Yonhap reported.
Workers were reportedly pressured to sign documents to leave the country voluntarily, though this step could ultimately have serious implications should they attempt to reenter the United States in the future. One Korean human rights expert observed that the conditions described by the workers did not meet international standards for the treatment of detainees.
Nonetheless, notably, such conditions are widespread in U.S. immigration detention.
“I hope people understand that the anomaly here aren’t the conditions — the conditions are very typical — the anomaly is that they put a number of documented workers from a high-income country in those conditions,” observed independent journalist Felipe De La Hoz. “This is how people are treated in custody routinely.”
Many people arrested during the Sept. 4 raid may in fact still be in custody.
Workers arrested in the raid who did not return to Korea have not yet been released on bond, Julia Solórzano, the legal and policy director of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, told The New York Times on Friday.
“In this raid, it is notable that they seem to have taken so many of the workers into detention,” Solórzano told the Times. “It makes it very hard to support people, and it creates conditions that make it hard for workers to fairly assess their immigration options.”
Some Central and South American workers arrested in the raid had work permits and were legally present in the United States under either Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Times reported, citing attorneys and the group Migrant Equity SouthEast.
The Trump administration has attacked and sought to limit both programs. But if those statuses were current for the arrested workers in question, they should have prevented the workers’ arrest, detention and potential deportation proceedings.
A State Department spokesperson declined to comment “on private diplomatic communications” or “Department actions with respect to specific cases.” The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.