Rights body calls for warrant-based immigration raids to prevent repeat of Vietnamese worker's fatal fall

South Korea's National Human Rights Commission has recommended that the Ministry of Justice overhaul its immigration enforcement practices, following the death of a Vietnamese migrant worker who fell from a factory building last year while hiding from a raid at the Seongseo Industrial Complex in Daegu. The commission called for a reduction in on-site surprise raids and, as a general rule, the use of court-issued warrants when searching workplaces and detaining individuals.

The commission said Friday it had issued the recommendation to the minister of justice on Sept. 9, urging institutional reforms to protect the lives, physical safety and due-process rights of those subject to immigration enforcement.

The worker, identified by his Vietnamese name Tuan, had been hiding in a third-floor storage room of an automotive parts manufacturing factory in Daegu's Seongseo Industrial Complex when immigration officers launched a raid on Oct. 28 last year. The enforcement team concluded its search at around 3:50 p.m. and fully withdrew from the scene at around 6:10 p.m. Investigators found that Tuan had been in contact with an acquaintance as late as 6:27 p.m. before falling from a window near the storage room.

Tuan's father filed a complaint with the commission in December of that year, arguing that the raid had violated his son's right to life. The commission acknowledged that enforcement operations can prompt workers to flee or hide, but found no direct causal link to Tuan's death, noting that officers had not directly pursued or used physical force against him and that the fall occurred after they had already withdrawn. The complaint was accordingly dismissed.

The commission nonetheless cited a failure to manage safety during the operation. The Ministry of Justice typically deploys safety officers during raids as a precaution. Seven safety officers accompanied the team during the Tuan raid, but the commission found that some had left the scene or attended to other duties before the search was fully completed, neglecting their accident-prevention role. "The guidelines do not explicitly require safety officers to remain until the end of a raid, but since their very purpose is to prevent incidents, they should have stayed on site," a commission official said. "We determined that this needed to be made explicit."

Although officers had searched up to the third floor, Tuan was not found. "There were many portable air conditioners and other items stacked in the third-floor storage room at the time," a commission official said. "It appears he was hiding deep inside and was not discovered."

The commission also recommended that procedures be established to notify any workers still in hiding once a raid has ended, concluding that Tuan had remained concealed for an extended period without knowing the officers had left. "There is a general practice of informing the business owner when a raid is over," a commission official said. "The intent is to create a procedure by which the owner publicly announces the all-clear so that workers hiding in dangerous parts of the facility can also be informed."

The commission said a warrant requirement should be introduced for searches inside workplaces and the detention of individuals, reasoning that entering a factory to search for and apprehend foreign nationals amounts in effect to a coercive measure akin to a search and seizure or an arrest. It called for laws and guidelines to be revised so that such operations are carried out, as a rule, on the basis of warrants issued by a judge. "The Ministry of Justice will decide whether to pursue a legislative amendment or establish procedures permissible under existing guidelines," a commission official said.

Alongside this, the commission recommended shifting enforcement policy away from catching individual undocumented workers on the spot and toward dismantling the structures that enable irregular stays — including illegal employment brokers and unlawful labor dispatch and supply arrangements. The recommendations also included notifying those subject to enforcement of their right to remain silent and their right to legal counsel in a language they can understand, as well as replacing outdated body cameras.

The Ministry of Justice said it is currently reviewing the commission's recommendations. "We plan to respond within 90 days after examining the overall content," a ministry official said.