South Korean Engineers Detained in Georgia Battery Plant Raid Not Looking To Return to America

The skilled employees from South Korea who were swept up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia earlier this month say they have no interest in returning to America to get back to work.Following a September 4 raid by ICE on a Hyundai-LG battery manufacturing facility under construction at Ellabell, Georgia, many South Korean employees are reconsidering the prospect of future employment in the United States. The immigration operation resulted in the detention of 475 individuals, including 317 South Korean nationals, who were reportedly held in substandard conditions.“It started to look serious because we thought we would be taking the transport vehicle, but then they started putting handcuffs and shackles, and that’s when we thought, ‘Oh, this is not going to be a simple transport,'” a LG Energy Solution engineer, Cho Young-hee, told Reuters about the September 4 raid executed by ICE, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.The employees were allegedly detained in cramped and unsanitary conditions without any real explanation for their arrests.According to a secret diary written by one employee, obtained by Yonhap News Agency and republished by Time magazine, ICE agents stormed the facility at about 10 in the morning, rounded up employees, and bound their wrists with zip ties. Once in custody, the employees were told to fill out papers for foreign arrest warrants without being informed of their legal rights.“We handed in the papers thinking that we would be released after filling them out,” a diary entry from the unidentified employee reads.After completing paperwork, ICE agents seized the employees’ belongings and loaded them into police vans, with some transported in waist, ankle, and wrist chains, according to the diary. The diary’s author says it took more than nine hours before they were placed in the vans.The employees were initially held in five temporary 72-person holding pens that were extremely cold, forcing detainees to wrap themselves in towels. The facility lacked clocks and had moldy mattresses; some detainees were eventually transferred to assigned cells.Detainees allegedly had their waists and hands restrained, according to South Korean newspaper Hankyoreh. The facility’s toilets were not separate, requiring the employees to use small sheets for privacy, and only a fist-sized window provided natural light.“It felt like our basic human rights weren’t being guaranteed,” Mr. Young-hee, who was in America on a B-1 visa, told the Wall Street Journal. “Their initial attitude was very aggressive,” Mr. Cho said, adding that “as time went on, it seemed like they realized we hadn’t committed any major illegal acts.” “[They] gradually seemed to think, ‘Something’s not right here, we shouldn’t be talking to them like this.’”Industry experts have previously identified these South Korean employees as crucial for the rapid completion of major manufacturing projects across America, making their potential reluctance to return a significant concern for the construction sector. The raid and subsequent detentions of the employees caused an uproar in South Korea, with officials criticizing the American visa system and Korean-based companies reconsidering their investments in America. South Korea recently committed to a $350 billion trade agreement with direct investments.The Hyundai-LG battery plant, designed to create thousands of American jobs, now faces a two- to three-month startup delay due to the raid’s impact.American immigration officials initially celebrated the raid at the Hyundai Motor and LG Energy Solution battery project site. However, the Trump administration has also acknowledged the importance of South Korean investment and the specialized skills these employees offer for getting manufacturing plants operational.Last week, Mr. Trump offered to allow the employees to stay in the United States, but some are unwilling.“Nobody is going to stay and work when it’s like this,” an engineer for an LGES subcontractor, Jang Young-seol, said to Reuters.South Korean-based businesses have long had trouble obtaining proper visas for specialist employees like the ones rounded up at the Hyundai-LG plant, who are often needed at project sites for months at a time. Both the United States and South Korea are seeking ways to establish a new type of visa for Koreans.South Korea has been attempting for years to push forward a bill in Washington that would create new visa categories that would accommodate skilled employees who are required to stay in America for longer periods, but the bills have had trouble getting passed in Congress.

South Korean Engineers Detained in Georgia Battery Plant Raid Not Looking To Return to America

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