After she was assaulted by her romantic partner in 2000 while living in Los Angeles County, Maria Gutierrez Saragon turned to a family friend who said he could help her secure immigration papers.

Because she had been the victim of a crime, the friend said, he could help her obtain authorization to stay in the U.S.

While it’s true that immigrant crime victims qualify for special benefits in some instances, the promise to get Gutierrez Saragon citizenship within three months at a discount dragged on for more than a decade. A housekeeper with a modest income, she was slowly bled for more than $100,000 through a mix of false assurances and threats.

“I had to give him all my money instead of being able to buy my children what they need,” she said between sobs in an interview. “It was like torture. Every time the phone rang or every time a paper arrived for me, they were asking for more money.”

She was a victim of so-called notario fraud, in which scammers acting as lawyers extract large sums from vulnerable immigrants.

The swindle is not a new one. But despite longstanding campaigns to raise awareness, advocates and law enforcement officials say they are concerned about a resurgence under the second Trump administration. Sweeps by federal agents and the deployment of troops to Los Angeles, they say, have created a climate of fear ripe for exploitation.

The hundreds caught up in the recent raids will be seeking affordable legal help as they fight to keep the lives they have built in the United States. Compounding matters, attorneys who specialize in immigration law say there is a shortage of qualified people working in the field. Unless separately appearing in state or federal court on criminal charges, people in civil immigration proceedings are typically not entitled to a court-appointed lawyer.

The scam that bilked Gutierrez Saragon, a native of Mexico, hinges on confusion over what a notary public does in the U.S., and how it differs from Latin America and elsewhere, where “notarios” have far more legal standing.

A notary public in the U.S. serves as an impartial witness when important documents are signed. But in other parts of the world, the term refers to an attorney with special credentials who has received the equivalent of a law license and who is authorized to represent others before the government, according to Victor D. Lopez, a professor of legal studies at Hofstra University.

The type of fraud can vary. Some victims pay money to notarios who promise to represent them in hearings with immigration officials and never show up. Others see valid asylum claims end with deportation orders because the information submitted was false, bearing no resemblance to the harrowing experiences that forced them out of their home countries.

“It’s the type of crime that preys upon the most needy and desperate people,” Lopez said, adding that few places outside of Colorado have taken meaningful steps to crack down on immigration-related abuses.

Because of underreporting, he and others said, there is little reliable data on how many fraud victims there are each year. Many who have suffered losses are afraid to contact law enforcement because of their immigration status.

Gutierrez Saragon recounted in Spanish how she was duped by her notario, whom she and an attorney she found to help unravel the scheme identified as Fidel Marquez Cortes.

It started small, Gutierrez Saragon recalled: A few hundred dollars to process her fingerprints. Several hundred more for background checks. Trips to New York and Washington, D.C., which he claimed he needed to take to collect her passport. Each time, she gave him money to pay for the flight, hotel, rental car and gas, she said, but he always came back with an excuse for why he needed more time and cash.

Whenever she pushed back, she claimed, Marquez Cortes warned that she’d lose her chance at citizenship. She recalled how he would show her official-looking documents that he claimed were from a law firm in Orange County — all written in English and full of legal jargon she didn’t understand.

Only later did she learn that he had created a fake letterhead for the law firm, and was using the money she gave him to pay for his back taxes, child support and even a speeding ticket, she said.

Eventually, in February 2011, Gutierrez Saragon found a lifeline in the Immigrants Rights Project, a Los Angeles nonprofit that offers pro bono services for people seeking a path to citizenship or permanent residency. She came into their office terrified that it was her last day in the country, attorney Gina Amato Lough recalled.

“She was trembling,” Lough said.

Her new client’s first words, Lough said, suggested she thought she was turning herself in to the authorities rather than seeking free legal counsel: “I know that you’re the immigration service and you have the power to deport me. But the day has come where I just have to know what’s happened to my case.”

Lough encouraged her to file a police report the following day at Olympic Division station. But an officer at the front desk turned her away, saying it wasn’t a crime and that she needed to go to a courthouse to file a civil complaint. Lough accompanied her the following day and was told by another officer that they didn’t take reports for such cases “because it’s so common in L.A. that we couldn’t possibly prosecute it.”

After Lough protested, police agreed to take a report and eventually, the man was charged with grand theft and convicted.

Despite what Lough described as “a lack of reputable immigration attorneys” to help people through the labyrinthine U.S. immigration process, her group fought against a proposal by the state bar association to help bridge the justice gap by creating a paraprofessional classification, which would lower the bar to entry in the field.

Lough worried such a change would create more confusion and lead to more fraud. She called for local authorities to take seriously an issue that is often overlooked.

Most district attorneys are reluctant to prosecute unless there are “multiple cases and hundreds of dollars in losses,” she said. “There is a huge lack of enforcement within L.A. County.”

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis echoed that sentiment.

Solis said she has fought for stronger regulations for a problem that isn’t confined to the Latino community, pointing to recent cases in the county involving immigrants from Asian and European countries.

“How do you deter the behavior if there is no teeth in the law?” Solis asked.

Some attorneys who practice immigration law say they are coming across scams that play out entirely online, allowing perpetrators to vanish before authorities even have a chance to investigate.

Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, said she recently had a client arrive saying they were expecting to collect a green card after sending money to someone they had been communicating with on WhatsApp.

The person on WhatsApp told the client they could pick up the proof of permanent residency status with Toczylowski’s organization, which was a lie.

“Essentially that person was masquerading as a nonprofit organization,” Toczylowski said, adding that her group is preparing a public service announcement to warn about the scam.

Other times, immigration consultants aren’t out to defraud their clients, but still sometimes “make promises that they can’t keep,” she said.

Toczylowski’s center relies on local, state and federal funding, the latter of which has been threatened — a troubling development that comedian John Oliver highlighted on his show “Last Week Tonight.” After the episode aired, Toczylowski said the center received a flood of online donations, but not nearly enough to offset potential cuts to federal funding.

The center is also a plaintiff in an ongoing federal lawsuit out of Northern California against the Department of Human Services over slashed funding, she said.

When the case involving Marquez Cortes, the man who defrauded Gutierrez Saragon, finally went to trial, he was found guilty and a superior court judge ordered him to pay three installments totaling $66,000 in restitution or face a two-year prison sentence.

He eventually fled to Mexico, where a bail bondsman tracked him down and he was arrested by local police, according to Lough.

Lough said she pushed for the man to be extradited back to the U.S. to serve out his sentence, but to this day she’s not sure what his fate was. Gutierrez Saragon hasn’t recovered her losses.

“She’s never seen a dime,” Lough said. “And he’s never spent not a day in jail.”