Roughly 200,000 children who were adopted overseas now at risk for deportation from US, lawyers say

As many as 200,000 adopted children who were born overseas are now at risk of detention or deportation by the Trump administration because they never received U.S. citizenship, lawyers say.

Over the past 80 years, American parents have adopted a total of more than 500,000 children from abroad — some kidnapped from their biological parents by unscrupulous adoption agencies.

But some of those parents never got around to actually obtaining citizenship for their children, leaving tens of thousands who have spent almost their entire lives in the U.S. but have no legal status.

"Most immigrants know from the very beginning what they have to do to gain legal status, but many adoptees have never questioned whether or not they have it, until now," Minnesota-based family law attorney Mónica Dooner Lindgren told The New York Times in a recent report shedding light on the problem.

"The Department of State website says that a U.S. valid passport is sufficient to prove citizenship, but that is not preventing agents from detaining adoptees."