ALPHARETTA, Ga. — A day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents released 300 South Koreans from a Georgia detention center, friends and family are sharing about their ordeal.
The former detainees, including a senior finance executive for Hyundai, were held at the ICE detention center in Folkston, Georgia. The release occurred following the intervention of the South Korean government.
They insist they were in the U.S. legally but were detained anyway.
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Channel 2’s Richard Elliot spoke exclusively with a friend and relative of the now-former detainees.
Elliot started texting with them before that plane took off carrying the 300 South Korean workers and their families home.
But they didn’t want to talk on camera until that plane left U.S. airspace.
Still, they asked Channel 2 Action News not to show their faces or use names because they fear retribution.
The Korean community is outraged.
“This is not how, this is not. It’s just not right,” said a woman who is a friend of a person swept up in the ICE raid
Their stories are similar yet different, but both asked us not to show their faces or use their names or the names of the Hyundai workers.
His cousin was a senior finance executive for Hyundai, in the U.S., he says, on a valid work visa when ICE agents raided the plant last week.
He, along with 299 other South Korean workers, were taken to the ICE detention center in Folkston.
He says agents never told his cousin why he was detained and never told him why he was released.
He flew home with his family Wednesday only after the direct intervention of the South Korean government.
Her friend is Mexican but, she says, a legal permanent resident with DACA status.
When he was detained, she says their entire community raised such a ruckus with elected officials, ICE finally released him Wednesday.
They’re both came forward to share their stories and to remind people that ICE still holds 175 Hyundai LG Battery workers in detention, and they think some if not all should be released.
Channel 2 Action News reached out to ICE for a response and was told any response would have to come from the White House. The White House hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
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