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Comment by firesteelrain | Hacker News Reader

Your questions are valid however diverges from the main point. The South Korean citizens in question were breaking the law. Whether we agree on ICE’s approach and how that reflects on optics is more of a political question for this administration. Clearly, the South Korean citizens were not following established US Visa Law and Policy.

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That is simply not true. Automatic/assumed visa waivers has been the way international professionals do temporary work in the US for many decades. Yes, the state department and DHS after it have always had the ability to revoke this waiver when abused. But there is simply no abuse alleged here. They showed up to build a factory, made no attempt to hide that fact, and that's exactly what they were "caught" doing.

This "Yooz Brok Duh Lah" absolutism is a transparently political excuse for what is very obviously a norm-breaking and unjust enforcement of a law that was working very well.

As a reasonably impartial observer, I think the truth here is somewhere in the middle. Like almost any large American factory, there are going to be some handful of people who are illegal immigrants through some means or other (if I understand correctly they had a warrant for 4 Latina people). Sweeping up anyone there who didn't have an iron clad visa, I imagine that was just a political play.

I think the premise is off. DHS said some detainees were on the Visa Waiver Program, which only permits business visits and forbids employment. Others were on B-1, which covers meetings or limited training but not factory construction. DHS also mentioned expired or improper visas. We do not have a full manifest, so some roles may have been lawful, but the evidence presented so far shows that at least some of those detained were not following the rules of their visa.

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