The government of South Korea announced on Sunday (7) an agreement With the United States to repact workers detained during a major immigration operation at a Hyundai factory in Georgia. A chartered plane will be sent to bring back its citizens.
“There are still some administrative procedures to be completed,” said presidential cabinet chief Kang Hoon. “Once completed, the chartered plane will leave to bring our citizens,” he added, without specifying when, according to the Yonhap Agency.
The operation, which took place last Thursday (4) in a construction site of the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America (HMGMA), resulted in the detention of 475 workers. About 300 was of South Korean origin, according to the Yonhap news agency and the newspaper The Wall Street Journal.
The action, considered the largest of the type in the history of the National Security Investigations Office (HSI), aimed to investigate complaints of “illegal labor practices and other serious federal crimes”.
According to HSI’s Steven Schark, workers were irregularly in the US, with some having entered the country illegally, others with tourist visas that prevent them from working and some with expired visas. Most detainees were transferred to the Folkston Processing Center in Georgia, in custody of the Customs Immigration and Control Service (ICE).
The government of South Korea has expressed its concern about what happened, noting that “the economic activities of our companies … not even the rights of our citizens should be unfairly affected.”
The factory in question is part of a complex intended for the production of electric vehicles and their components, a Hyundai billionaire investment in the region.
