Purdue University student Yeonsoo Go was released from the custody of ICE after being arrested last Thursday. She entered the US from South Korea on an R-2 visa in 2021 with her mother.
Pix11, a New York television station, reported that the South Korean student was deported back to her family from Louisiana's Richwood Correctional Center on Monday evening.
Go, who is the daughter of an pioneering Episcopal priest, was let out of ICE custody following a sizeable gathering of family and friends rallying behind the student who is majoring in pharmaceutical sciences.
On Monday, there were tearful moments when the daughter and mother met at 26 Federal Plaza, which is the same place she was arrested.
Her arrest caused outrage among civil rights groups, Korean American interest groups, and religious communities.
The Department of Homeland Security asserts that the visa expired over two years ago for Go, but her attorney insisted that it was still active and will remain so until this year's end.
The Monday evening release came after protests outside the federal building in Lower Manhattan on the weekend.
After her release. Go told PIX11 that “everything just feels surreal” as she walked out of the jail and headed back to Scarsdale, New York, with her mother Rev. Kyrie Kim.
When questioned about her detention at Federal Plaza and in Louisiana, she just said, “I was praying hard.”
Go, a recent Scarsdale High School graduate, is enrolled at Purdue University and has been in the nation since 2021 on a religious visa.
Speaking about her daughter's release from ICE detention facility, Kim pointed out that her daughter is lucky compared to many other captives. “It's not [just] Soo in this situation. There are more, maybe, those in need of support.”
“I'm just happy that she's with me,” she stated.
Church leaders and advocacy organizations said that five plainclothes officers encircled Go and took her into custody. She was not given the chance to talk with her lawyer further, and no warrant was shown at the scene, as per her family and supporters.
Department of Homeland Security officers provided a radically different account of what happened last week.
“Yeonsoo Go, an illegal alien from South Korea, overstayed her visa that expired more than two years ago,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated in a statement.
