Search
07 Sept 2025
Search
07 Sept 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
More than 300 South Korean workers detained following a massive immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in Georgia will be released and brought home, the South Korean government has announced.
Presidential chief of staff Kang Hoon-sik said that South Korea and the US had finalised negotiations on the workers’ release.
He said South Korea plans to send a charter plane to bring the workers home as soon as remaining administrative steps are completed.
Foreign minister Cho Hyun is to leave for the US on Monday for talks related to the workers’ releases, South Korean media reported.
US immigration authorities said on Friday that they had detained 475 people, most of them South Korean nationals, when hundreds of federal agents raided Hyundai’s sprawling manufacturing site in Georgia where the Korean automaker makes electric vehicles.
South Korea’s foreign minister Cho Hyun later said that more than 300 South Koreans were among the people detained.
The operation was the latest in a long line of workplace raids conducted as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. But the one on Thursday was especially distinct because of its large size and the fact that it targeted a manufacturing site state officials have long called Georgia’s largest economic development project.
Video released by US immigration and customs enforcement on Saturday showed a caravan of vehicles driving up to the site and then federal agents directing workers to line up outside.
Some detainees were ordered to put their hands up against a bus as they were frisked and then shackled around their hands, ankles and waist.
Agents focused their operation on a plant that is still under construction at which Hyundai has partnered with LG Energy Solution to produce batteries that power EVs.
Most of the people detained were taken to an immigration detention centre in Folkston, Georgia, near the Florida state line.
No-one has been charged with any crimes yet, Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of homeland security investigations, said during a news conference on Friday, adding that the investigation was ongoing.
The South Korean government, a close US ally, expressed “concern and regret” over the raid targeting its citizens and sent diplomats to the site.
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
