South Korea sends an airplane to bring workers detained in the American immigration raid

A South Korean charter plane left for the United States on Wednesday to bring back Korean workers detained during an immigration raid in Georgia last week, although officials said that the return of the plane with workers on board would not take place as quickly as they had hoped.

A total of 475 workers, including more than 300 South Koreans, were gathered during the September 4 raid at the battery plant under construction at the Hyundai car plant. The American authorities have published a video showing certain chains of chains around their hands, ankles and sizes, causing a shock and a feeling of betrayal among many people in South Korea, a key American ally.

The South Korea government later said that it had entered into an agreement with the United States for the Liberation of Workers.

South Korean television images have shown the Charter plane, a Korean Air Boeing 747-8i, take off at Incheon International Airport, just west of Seoul. The South Korea Foreign Ministry said that it was talking with US officials to let the plane go home with workers released as soon as possible.

But he said that the plane cannot deviate from the United States on Wednesday as South Korea wished it earlier, for an unpertified reason involving the American part.

Korean workers are currently detained in an immigration detention center in Folkston in southeast Georgia. The South Korean media indicated that they would be released and chased from 285 miles (460 kilometers) by bus for Atlanta to take the charter plane.

South Korean officials said they had negotiated with the United States to win “voluntary” workers from workers, rather than deportations that could make them inadmissible to return to the United States for 10 years.

The workplace raid by the US Homeland Security Agency was its most important to date as it is continuing its mass expulsion program. The Georgia Battery Plant, a joint venture between Hyundai and LG Energy Solution, is one of the more than 20 major industrial sites that South Korean companies are currently building in the United States.

Many South Koreans consider Georgia’s raid as a source of national shame and remain amazed. Only 10 days earlier, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and US President Donald Trump held their first summit in Washington on August 25. At the end of July, South Korea also promised hundreds of billions of dollars in American investments to conclude a pricing agreement.

Experts say that South Korea will probably not take any major reprisals against the United States, but Georgia’s raid could become a source of tensions between the Allies while the Trump administration intensifies immigration raids.

South Korea is slamming American visa delays

The American authorities said that some of the detained workers had illegally crossed the American border, while others had entered the country legally but had expired visas or entered a visa derogation which prohibited them from working.

But a lawyer for some of the detainees said that his customers were on a visa allowing them to travel for business up to 90 days, a period that the lawyer said they were still inside.

Meanwhile, South Korean experts and officials said Washington had not yet acted at Seoul’s request to ensure a full visa system to accommodate qualified Korean workers necessary to build installations, even if the White House has put pressure on South Korea to extend industrial investments in the United States

South Korean companies are counting on short-term visitors or an electronic system for travel authorization to send qualified workers necessary to launch manufacturing sites and manage other installation tasks in which local workers have no training, a practice that had been largely tolerated for years.

LG Energy Solution, who employed most of the workers, informed its South Korean employees in the United States on short-term visa visas B-1 or B-2 so as not to come to work until further notice, and told people with Estas to return home immediately.

During his visit to Washington, the South Korean Minister for Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun met representatives of large Korean companies operating in the United States, including Hyundai, LG and Samsung on Tuesday. Cho told them that South Korean officials were active discussion with US officials and legislators about the possible legislation to create a separate visa quota for South Korean professionals operating in the United States, according to the DHO Ministry.

Trump said that this week, workers “were illegally here” and that the United States had to work with other countries so that its experts form American citizens to carry out specialized work such as the manufacture of batteries and computer.

But no company in the United States only makes the machines used in the Georgia battery plant, according to Atlanta’s immigration lawyer Charles Kuck, who represents several of the South Korean nationals held. Kuck told the Associated Press on Monday that it means that workers had to come from abroad to install or repair equipment on site, because it would take about three to five years to train someone in the United States to do so.

At a meeting of the cabinet council on Tuesday, Lee said that he felt a “great responsibility” on the raid and expressed his hope that the operations of the South Korean companies will not aim unfairly again. He said his government will pressure to improve systems to avoid recurrences of similar incidents.