South Korean President Lee Jae Myung ordered the full efforts to respond to the arrests of hundreds of citizens of the nation on Saturday in an immigration raid in the United States on a battery factory in Hyundai Motor Car.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said that the government has set up a team to respond to Thursday’s arrest of more than 300 Koreans in the facility in the southern state of Georgia and that he can go to Washington to meet officials if necessary.
“We are deeply concerned and feel a heavy sense of responsibility about this issue,” said Cho.
The arrest of approximately 475 employees in the factory near Savannah part of the escalating action by US President Donald Trump against Immigranten-Was The largest enforcement operation with one site in the history of the US Department of Interior Security.
Homeland Security officials said that the employees in the site of Ellabell, Georgia, the site were excluded to work in the US after they had illegally crossed the border or a over -speaking visa.
The research took place for a few months, Steven Schrank, special agent who is responsible for research for Georgia, said during a press conference.
“This was not an immigration operation in which agents went into the building, gathering people and putting them in buses,” he said. “This has been a criminal study of several months.”
The raid came from a “criminal investigation into allegations of illegal employment practices and serious federal crimes” in the Hyundai Motor-LG Energy Solution Joint Venture factory in the city of Ellabell, Schrank told reporters on Friday.
A Hyundai Motor spokesperson said that none of the detained people was used directly by the automaker and that it was “closely monitoring the situation at the Georgia construction site and” worked to understand the specific circumstances “.
The company said that the Chief Manufacturing Officer for North America, Chris Susock, “would assume the board of the entire megasite in Georgia”.
“We will conduct an investigation to ensure that all suppliers and their subcontractors keep all laws and regulations. Hyundai has a zero tolerance for those who do not follow the law,” said it.
LG Energy Solution said that “all relevant details collected” and “would” fully collaborate with the relevant authorities “.
Schrank said that most of the 475 people who are now being held in a Georgia detention facility are South Korean subjects. Korean media have held the number of South Koreans on around 300 people.
Social Media video showed a man who wore a vest with the letters of him, an acronym for research into domestic safety, who tells employees in yellow safety vests: “We have a house search for the entire site. We need the construction to stop immediately. We need all the work to end the site now.”
The US Department of Justice said in a statement that several people tried to flee during the raid and some had to be fished on the site from a sewer pond.
Zuid -Korea had already encouraged Washington to respect the rights of its citizens before Cho’s comments on Saturday.
“The economic activities of our investors and the legitimate rights and interests of our nationals should not be wrongly violated in the course of the American law enforcement,” said spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lee Jae-Woone on Friday.
South Korea, the fourth largest economy in Asia, is an important car maker and electronic producer with several factories in the United States.
Its companies have invested billions of dollars to build factories in the United States in an attempt to gain access to the American market and to avoid Tarif threats from Trump.
The South Korean president met Trump during a visit last month and Seoul promised hundreds of billions of dollars in US investments in July.
Trump has promised to breathe new life into the production sector in the United States, while he also promises millions of migrants without deporting papers.
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