South Korea, a close ally of Washington, has expressed its shock at the mass arrests made in Georgia last week.
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South Korea will this week repatriate 300 of its citizens detained in a US immigration raid at a Hyundai plant in the state of Georgia, following an agreement between Seoul and Washington.
In a move that has shocked its East Asian ally and sparked debate on social media, hundreds of US immigration agents arrested 475 people at the site on Thursday, most of whom were South Korean.
Videos released since the raid show workers being handcuffed and ankle-cuffed, rounded up and put on buses.
The US officials said the arrested workers were suspected of living and working in the US illegally. It is unclear what type of US visa those arrested had, or whether any of them overstayed it.
On Monday, the South Korean foreign ministry said it did not want its citizens to be deported but to leave the country voluntarily, meaning that they could potentially re-enter the US at a later date.
Kang Hoon-sik, South Korean President Lee Jae-myung’s chief of staff, confirmed on Sunday that an arrangement had been reached with the Trump administration over the repatriation of the detainees.
It is expected that roughly 300 South Koreans will be brought home on a charter plane on Wednesday, once the last administrative steps are finished.
As part of the arrangements, South Korea’s Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is scheduled to travel to the US on Monday afternoon.
Experts needed to train US workers, Trump says
The immigration raid on the manufacturing plant in Georgia — where Hyundai produces electric vehicles and soon EV batteries with its partner LG Energy Solution — is the largest to have ever taken place at a single site, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.
The work on the battery plant has been halted after the arrests, AP reported.
The detentions, which came as part of the US government's mass deportation programme, took place just 10 days after Trump and his South Korean counterpart met in Washington and pledged closer business ties between the countries.
The allies earlier reached a trade deal in July, with Seoul receiving lower tariff rates in exchange for spending $100 billion (€85.2bn) on American energy and investing $350 billion (€298.4bn) in the US.
Since the arrests, Seoul has said that it will attempt to improve the visa system for South Koreans heading to the US on business.
Speaking on Friday, Steven Schrank, the lead Georgia agent of Homeland Security Investigations, claimed that some of the detained workers had illegally entered the country, while others held expired visas or visa waivers that did not permit them to work.
Trump has said that immigration officials were right to make the arrests, but noted that foreign help could be required to train US workers with specialist tasks.
“If you don’t have people in this country right now that know about batteries, maybe we should help them along,” Trump said.
“We do have to work something out where we bring in experts so that our people can be trained so that they can do it themselves,” he added.