“It was really hard. I wanted to die.”

Rong Ying Chen says she suffered through an unimaginable ordeal in her native country of China.

“It was very difficult for me,” she told NY1 through an interpreter.

She says the Chinese government detained her while she was pregnant with a second child -- and forced her to have an abortion. She fled China by plane to Cuba and then to Mexico. She entered the U.S. illegally and requested asylum, claiming persecution under the one-child policy then in effect in China. In 2010, the U.S. ruled in favor of her claim, and gave her a green card.

But now the Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport her, alleging she obtained legal status based on “a fraudulent and fabricated asylum claim.”

“I cried and cried because I did nothing,” she says. “I did not lie on my application. There’s nothing fake.”

“It’s chaos,” says her attorney, Jean Wang.

Wang also represents nearly 50 other immigrants in the same predicament. All had been represented by one of a half-dozen lawyers in Manhattan’s Chinatown and Flushing, Queens, busted six years ago on federal charges they made up or embellished the asylum claims of at least 200 clients. All of the attorneys  pleaded guilty or were convicted.

Wang and other lawyers estimate the government is now trying to deport more than 1,000 other immigrants who were not part of the criminal case but had used one of the six lawyers in successfully seeking asylum. The problem, Wang says, is that their asylum claims were legitimate.

“They’ve had asylum granted to them for years. They’ve lived in the United States for years,” the lawyer says. “They’re not drug dealers or murderers. They have no criminal history. They’re living in society, working in society, contributing to society and paying their taxes. There’s no reason you have to place them in removal proceedings and deport them now."

“I didn’t lie. I didn’t lie at all,” Rong says.

The government says a total of 3,500 immigrants used one of the six lawyers in successfuly applying for aslyum. Another 10,000 received green cards after being sponsored by one of the 3,500 aslyum grantees.

The Department of Homeland Security says the government is now reveiwing each of the 13,500 cases to “ensure that the original asylum grants were lawfully obtained.” 

ICE, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said, "Because the regulations governing asylum termination require individualized assessments, the federal government cannot automatically terminate asylum in every case associated with the convicted parties."

The reviews began under the Obama Administration but lawyers say the effort has greatly expanded since President Trump took office. The attorneys allege that immigration officers are now so overwhelmed, the decisions they are making to deport many of the asylum grantees are often arbitrary and not rooted in the facts.