The fate of the South Koreans arrested at Hyundai is sealed

South Korea has announced that it has reached an agreement with the Trump administration to release South Koreans arrested in a large-scale raid by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The ICE unit arrested 475 people, including more than 300 South Koreans, at the construction site of an electric vehicle battery factory belonging to South Korean giants Hyundai (automotive) and LG (technology) in Georgia. This is the largest of many workplace raids under the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda.

The plant represents one of the largest foreign investments in Georgia. According to State Governor Brian Kemp, it is also Georgia's most important economic development project.

The South Korean president's chief of staff, Kang Hoon-sik, said that a chartered plane would be sent to take the detainees home once the administrative procedures had been completed. He also stressed that the authorities were trying to improve the visa system to avoid such incidents in the future.

The 475 people taken into custody were all suspected of living and working illegally in the United States, said Steven Schrank, Special Agent in Charge of Homeland Security Investigations.

"This was not an immigration operation where agents enter premises, round people up and put them on buses," said Schrank. "This was a criminal investigation conducted over several months, during which we gathered evidence, conducted interviews, collected documents and presented this material to the court in order to obtain judicial search warrants."

Tom Homan, the Trump administration's border "czar", told CNN that other larger-scale raids, like the one at the Hyundai plant, were likely. 

During the raid, several people tried to flee. Some even threw themselves into an onsite sewage lagoon, said the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Georgia. Another worker told Univision that he hid in a ventilation shaft to escape arrest.