South Korea Investigating ICE Treatment Of Arrested Workers | EUROtoday

The Trump administration remains to be coping with the worldwide fallout brought on by its latest arrest and detention of a whole bunch of South Korean employees throughout a raid on a battery plant in Georgia.

After the fierce backlash to the arrests and detention — in reportedly horrible circumstances — of over 300 South Korean employees, President Donald Trump issued an announcement on social media seemingly referring to the arrests and saying he didn’t wish to “frighten off” funding within the United States. A prime U.S. diplomat has additionally expressed “deep regret over the incident,” in accordance with the South Korean authorities.

But the fallout continues.

South Korea is investigating potential human rights abuses skilled by the employees as soon as they have been positioned within the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement final week, a spokesperson for South Korean President Lee Jae-yung stated Monday. The employees have since returned to Korea on a aircraft despatched to the United States by their authorities.

“I understand that the government is conducting a more thorough review with the companies to determine whether any human rights violations occurred,” presidential spokesperson Kang Yu-jung stated in a press briefing, Yonhap News Agency reported.

“The foreign ministry is looking at whether our demands were properly addressed, and the companies are also conducting their own reviews, to check whether any measures were insufficient on either the Korean side or U.S. side.”

South Korea’s commerce unions have reportedly referred to as for an official apology over the raid and subsequent detentions, and Lee has warned the “bewildering” motion might chill future funding within the United States. “We’re in an age of new normal in dealing with the United States,” Lee’s chief of employees stated Friday.

Lee additionally careworn that the arrested employees have been solely set to be within the United States briefly with a purpose to assist set up gear and arrange the battery manufacturing facility, which was a part of a Hyundai plant in Ellabell, Georgia.

“It’s not like these are long-term workers. When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the United States doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work,” Lee stated.

The mass arrest of the Korean employees can be shining a lightweight on the poor remedy of individuals in U.S. immigration detention — typically these whose dwelling governments don’t have sufficient financial leverage to press the difficulty with the United States.

By distinction, the indignant response to the raid from South Korea, a significant Asian financial energy and U.S. buying and selling companion, has prompted a hat-in-hand Trump response.

“When Foreign Companies who are building extremely complex products, machines, and various other ‘things,’ come into the United States with massive Investments, I want them to bring their people of expertise for a period of time to teach and train our people how to make these very unique and complex products, as they phase out of our Country, and back into their land,” Trump stated in a submit Sunday on Truth Social.

He added: “I don’t want to frighten off or disincentivize Investment into America by outside Countries or Companies. We welcome them, we welcome their employees, and we are willing to proudly say we will learn from them, and do even better than them at their own ‘game,’ sometime into the not too distant future!”

Trump and Lee had met solely two weeks earlier than the raid, and just some months in the past each nations had introduced a unfastened commerce settlement.

The Trump administration didn’t reply to HuffPost’s questions concerning the raid, together with whether or not the president’s submit was made in reference to it.

Some 475 individuals, together with over 300 South Koreans, have been arrested within the Sept. 4 raid on the Georgia battery plant.

The raid was the most important single-site enforcement motion in Department of Homeland Security historical past, Trump administration officers have stated.

The Korean employees have been largely within the United States underneath short-term enterprise visas or a visa waiver program. The Trump administration has alleged they violated the phrases of these statuses, although the principles round them are fuzzy and barely enforced so harshly. At least one one that was arrested had not violated any immigration legal guidelines, The Guardian and New York Times reported.

An lawyer representing a number of the employees later stated immigration brokers didn’t know there have been a whole lot of Korean employees there. “The Koreans were never part of the plan, which is why they didn’t even bring a single Korean translator with them,” the lawyer, Charles Kuck, advised MSNBC.

A search warrant for the raid lists solely 4 “target persons,” all seemingly with Hispanic names. The administration has stated anybody out of authorized standing is eligible to be arrested, detained and deported — making no distinction for individuals deemed public security threats or different priorities, and emphasizing the significance of so-called “collateral” arrests.

The remedy of the Korean employees as soon as they encountered ICE has drawn outrage.

One arrested employee recounted brokers pointing weapons at employees throughout the raid, and people arrested have been shackled on the wrists, waist and ankles. In detention, the employees have been initially stored in a big, crowded cell, and have been confronted with moldy bedding, loos that weren’t personal, and temperatures so chilly they wrapped themselves in towels to remain heat, Yonhap reported.

Workers have been reportedly pressured to signal paperwork to depart the nation voluntarily, although this step might finally have critical implications ought to they try and reenter the United States sooner or later. One Korean human rights skilled noticed that the circumstances described by the employees didn’t meet worldwide requirements for the remedy of detainees.

Nonetheless, notably, such circumstances are widespread in U.S. immigration detention.

“I hope people understand that the anomaly here aren’t the conditions — the conditions are very typical — the anomaly is that they put a number of documented workers from a high-income country in those conditions,” noticed impartial journalist Felipe De La Hoz. “This is how people are treated in custody routinely.”

Many individuals arrested throughout the Sept. 4 raid could in actual fact nonetheless be in custody.

Workers arrested within the raid who didn’t return to Korea haven’t but been launched on bond, Julia Solórzano, the authorized and coverage director of the Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, advised The New York Times on Friday.

“In this raid, it is notable that they seem to have taken so many of the workers into detention,” Solórzano advised the Times. “It makes it very hard to support people, and it creates conditions that make it hard for workers to fairly assess their immigration options.”

Some Central and South American employees arrested within the raid had work permits and have been legally current within the United States underneath both Temporary Protected Status or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Times reported, citing attorneys and the group Migrant Equity SouthEast.

The Trump administration has attacked and sought to restrict each packages. But if these statuses have been present for the arrested employees in query, they need to have prevented the employees’ arrest, detention and potential deportation proceedings.

A State Department spokesperson declined to remark “on private diplomatic communications” or “Department actions with respect to specific cases.” The Department of Homeland Security didn’t reply to a request for remark.