ELLABELL ― From the outside, the electric vehicle battery plant next to Hyundai’s EV assembly factory looks ready for operations.

The only evidence that construction is ongoing inside the HL-GA Battery facility are the dozen or so lifts and hoists sitting outside the doors and several yet-to-be paved roads and parking lots.

That work was interrupted last week — and the plant’s opening delayed by two to three months, a top official said Thursday — by an immigration raid that triggered an international firestorm. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested about 475 laborers, including 316 Koreans, accused of working at the site illegally.

Those Korean detainees, along with 14 others from Asian countries, flew back to Korea on Thursday after a week at a federal detention center

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