Shirley Chung was just a year old when she was adopted by a US family in 1966.
Born in South Korea, her birthfather was a member of the American military, who returned home soon after Shirley was born. Unable to cope, her birth mother placed her in an orphanage in the South Korean capital, Seoul.
“He abandoned us, is the nicest way I can put it,” says Shirley, now 61.
After around a year, Shirley was adopted by a US couple, who took her back to Texas.
Shirley grew up living a life similar to that of many young Americans. She went to school, got her driving licence and worked as a bartender.
“I moved and breathed and got in trouble like many teenage Americans of the 80s. I’m a child of the 80s,” Shirley says.
Shirley had children, got married and became a piano teacher. Life carried on for decades with no reason to doubt her American identity.
But then in 2012, her world came crashing down.
She lost her Social Security card and needed a replacement. But when she went to her local Social Security office, Shirley was told she needed to prove her status in the country. Eventually she found out she did not have US citizenship.
“I had a little mental breakdown after finding out I wasn’t a citizen,” she says.
Shirley is not alone. Estimates of how many American adoptees lack citizenship range from 18,000 to 75,000. Some intercountry adoptees may not even know they lack US citizenship.
Dozens of adoptees have been deported to their countries of birth in recent years, according to the Adoptee Rights Law Center. A man born in South Korea and adopted as a child by an American family – only to be deported to his country of birth because of a criminal record – took his own life in 2017.
The reasons why so many US adoptees do not have citizenship are varied. Shirley blames her parents for failing to finalise the correct paperwork when she came to the US. She also blames the school system and the government for not highlighting that she did not have citizenship.
“I blame all the adults in my life that literally just dropped the ball and said: ‘She’s here in America now, she’s going to be fine.'”
“Well, am I? Am I going to be fine?”
Another woman, who requested anonymity for fear of attracting the attention of authorities, was adopted by an American couple from Iran in 1973 when she was two years old.
Growing up in the US Midwest, she encountered some racism but generally had a happy upbringing.
“I settled into my life, always understanding that I was an American citizen. That’s what I was told. I still believe that today,” she says.
But that changed when she tried to get a passport at the age of 38 and discovered immigration authorities had lost critical documents that supported her claim to citizenship.
This has further complicated her feelings surrounding identity.
“I personally don’t categorise myself as an immigrant. I didn’t come here as an immigrant with a second language, a different culture, family members, ties to a country that I was born in… my culture was erased,” she says.
“You are told that you have these rights as an American – to vote and to participate in democracy, to work, to go to school, to raise your family, to have freedoms – all these things that Americans have.
“And then all of a sudden they started pushing us into a category of immigrants, simply because they cut us from legislation. We should have all equally had citizenship rights because that was promised through adoption policies.”
For decades, intercountry adoptions approved by courts and government agencies did not automatically guarantee US citizenship. Adoptive parents sometimes failed to secure legal status or naturalised citizenship for their children.
The Child Citizenship Act of 2000 made some headway in rectifying this, granting automatic citizenship to international adoptees. But the law only covered future adoptees or those born after February 1983. Those who arrived before then were not granted citizenship, leaving tens of thousands in limbo.
Advocates have been pushing for Congress to remove the age cut-off but these bills have failed to make it past the House.
Some, like Debbie Principe, whose two adopted children have special needs, have spent decades trying to secure citizenship for their dependents.
She adopted two children from an orphanage in Romania in the 1990s after watching them on Shame of a Nation – a documentary about the neglect of children in orphanages following the 1989 Romanian Revolution, that sent shockwaves around the world when it aired.
The most recent rejection of citizenship came in May, and was followed by a notice stating that if the decision was not appealed in 30 days, she would have to turn in her daughter to Homeland Security, she said.
“We’ll just be lucky if they don’t get picked up and deported to another country that isn’t even their country of origin,” Ms Principe said.
Those fears for adoptees and their families have risen even further since President Donald Trump returned to the White House, with a vow to remove “promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of federal law”.
Last month, the Trump administration said “two million illegal aliens have left the United States in less than 250 days, including an estimated 1.6 million who have voluntarily self-deported and more than 400,000 deportations”.
While many Americans support deportations of illegal migrants, there has been uproar over some incidents.
In one case, 238 Venezuelans were deported by the US to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. They were accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang despite most of them having no criminal records.
Last month, US officials detained 475 people – more than 300 of them South Korean nationals – who they said were working illegally at Hyundai’s battery facility, one of the largest foreign investment projects in Georgia. The workers were taken away in handcuffs and chains to be detained, sparking outrage in their home country.
Adoptee rights groups say they have been flooded with requests for help since Trump’s return and some adoptees have gone into hiding.
“When the election results came in, it started to really cascade with requests for help,” said Greg Luce, an attorney and founder of the Adoptee Rights Law Center, adding he’s had more than 275 requests for help.
The adoptee who arrived from Iran in the 1970s said she has started avoiding certain areas, like her local Iranian supermarket, and shares an app with her friends so they always have access to her location, in case she is “swept up”.
“At the end of the day, they don’t care about your back story. They don’t care that you’re legally here and it’s just a paperwork error. I always tell people this one single piece of paper has essentially just ruined my life,” she said.
“As far as I’m concerned right now, I feel stateless.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Despite adoptees being left in limbo for decades, Emily Howe, a civil and human rights attorney who has worked with adoptees across the US, believes it is just a case of political will that should unite people from across the political spectrum.
“It should be a straightforward fix: adopted children should be equal to their biological siblings of parents who were US citizens at the time of birth,” Ms Howe said.
“The applicants have two, three, or four US citizen parents, and are now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. We’re talking about babies and toddlers who were shipped overseas through no fault of their own and lawfully admitted under US policy,” she added.
“These are people who literally were promised that they were going to be Americans when they were two years old.”
Shirley wishes she could get the US president into a room, so she and others like her could explain their stories.
“I would ask him to please have some compassion. We’re not illegal aliens,” she said.
“We were put on planes as little itty-bitty babies. Just please hear our story and please follow through with the promise that America gave each one of the babies that got on those planes: American citizenship.”