Those who complained were beaten and starved.

When the garment factory closed, Nguyen's mother was among women who risked their lives to help U.S. authorities investigate and convict the kingpins of what federal authorities have called the largest human trafficking case in U.S. history.

Nguyen was eventually able to attend college - but her education was nearly cut short when she and dozens of other children of human trafficking victims were denied financial aid pledged to those help the U.S. prosecute the smugglers.

The 20-year-old, who asked that her mother not be identified, said her mother received a special T-visa for her assistance in the trafficking case. Nguyen and her younger sister also obtained the visas after a nonprofit group reunited them with their mother in 2003 in a Vietnamese enclave in Westminster.

As a soft-spoken teen, she was overwhelmed by the vast differences between life in Hanoi and Orange County. She got lost in sprawling supermarkets and drank gallons of water every day because she wasn't used to the dry climate.

While still learning to speak English, she managed to graduate from Garden Grove High School in 2005 with a B-plus average. With her mother employed as a nurse, she enrolled at Hope International University, a Christian college in Fullerton, planning to study premed. She had an $8,000 state grant and expected her federal aid to cover her remaining college expenses.

After attending one semester at the Orange County college, Nguyen learned her request for federal aid had been denied and she had been reported to a collection agency.

"My first reaction was that I asked God, why do these things happen to me?" she said.

The school's financial aid director told Nguyen the university didn't recognize her T-visa.

"It's crystal clear under the law," said her attorney Sheila Neville, of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. "But they said they didn't know what we were talking about."

Bureaucratic confusion and indifference has kept dozens of eligible applicants from getting the money promised for college, according to lawyers who represent trafficking victims.

The lawyers said the U.S. Department of Education failed for nearly six years to set up a clear process for applying for the aid, leaving colleges unsure how to handle applicants.

The law is "a place where policy hasn't met practice," said Heather Moore, who oversees social service programs for trafficking victims at Los Angeles-based Coalition to Abolish Trafficking and Slavery.

About 1,000 people have been granted the special T-visas by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. They are among the poorest and most vulnerable in the nation.

"If we want to make sure we are not creating another class, if we want to prevent trafficking survivors from falling into the same vulnerable state that led them to being victims in the first place, we need to offer more than a visa," Moore said.

In handling Nguyen's case, Neville sought help from a network of lawyers specializing in trafficking victims and found dozens of other people stuck in a similar bureaucratic morass.

Some frustrated clients had dropped out of college. Others said they bypassed the confusion by persuading financial aid officers to recognize them as refugees.

Student Trang Dao, whose mother also worked in the Samoan sweatshop, managed to secure academic scholarships, but efforts to obtain the promised financial aid were rebuffed.

"It was kind of weird," said Dao, 20, a student at Golden West College. "My mom has the paper that says 'this person and her family qualifies for every program.'"

Under pressure from attorneys representing trafficking victims, the Department of Education finally set up a hot line in May for college financial aid officers to verify the status of the victims.

Federal officials also have sent a memo describing the new process to schools, U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Jane Glickman said.

Officials at Hope said last week that Nguyen had finally been approved for the federal financial aid and could return this semester, debt-free.

"Most of my life, I wanted to go to college," she said. "I don't know what I would do if I couldn't."