WASHINGTON — They came forward to tell their stories of working at President Donald Trump’s Bedminster golf club despite illegally being in the U.S.

They lost their jobs. Now they worry about being deported.

Unauthorized immigrants who formerly worked for the Trump Organization came to Capitol Hill Tuesday asking for protection as they provide information to law enforcement agencies looking at whether any laws were broken. They said they were abused and mistreated, and threatened with deportation if they complained. Many of them were recently laid off.

They found a receptive audience.

“These are pretty courageous individuals to come forth and speak about their experiences when the person who they used to work for is now president of the United States,” said U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., following his meeting with four immigrants, two of them who worked in Bedminster and two who worked at the Trump golf club in Westchester.

“Any attempt to try to affect their status during this period of time could be considered to be obstruction of justice,” Menendez said. He said he would talk to federal agencies who would investigate the charges and let officials there know that “they have information to give that is critical to understand whether violations of the law have taken place."

Anibal Romero, a Newark immigration lawyer who represents several former Trump Organization employees, said he has talked to the FBI and the New Jersey attorney general’s office. Leland Moore, a spokesman for state Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, said the office does not confirm or deny whether an investigation is taking place.

New Jersey Rep. Tom Malinowski, whose district includes Bedminster and who has met with the immigrants, said the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security should investigate the issue and protect the former employees from being forced to leave the country.

“It’s not an extraordinary thing,” said Malinowski, D-7th District. “Under the law, there is actually a special visa category for people who are material witnesses to crimes. If what they allege is true, this was a very serious violation of the law.”

One of the immigrants in question, Victorina “Vicki” Morales of Bound Brook, was a Guatemala native who illegally entered the U.S. and worked at the Trump golf club in Bedminster. She said through an interpreter that her employer helped her get fake documents, and that she was mistreated as the president ratcheted up his anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“People who work at his clubs treat us in a bad way because of what he says on TV,” Morales said.

Sandra Diaz, who also was an unauthorized immigrant when she arrived from Costa Rica and took a job with Trump’s Bedminster facility, acknowledged being surprised at Trump’s attacks.

“What is he doing?” Diaz, also of Bound Brook, who now has legal status, said she wondered when she heard the president. “He sees a lot of immigrants in this place.”

The accusations that the Trump Organization employed and abused unauthorized immigrants resurfaced as the federal government reopened after a record-long 35-day partial government shutdown brought about when the president refused to sign a spending bill that didn’t include $5.7 billion in taxpayer funds for a southern border wall he claimed Mexico would pay for.

A majority of U.S. voters in a Quinnipiac University poll released Tuesday, 56 percent, said Trump and congressional Republicans were responsible for the shutdown, while just 34 percent pinned the blame on congressional Democrats.

More than six in 10 voters, 61 percent, supported stronger border security measures without building a wall, with just one-third, 33 percent, opposed. And by 55 percent to 41 percent, they opposed building a wall at all, even though Trump has insisted that any deal to keep the government open past Feb. 15 include funding for the barrier.

“The president of the United States shut down the government for 35 days, caused massive suffering and disruption, to protest a problem that he is 100 percent complicit in,” Malinowski said. “This guy has been stoking fear of unlawful immigration while taking full advantage of it to save money in his business. I find that to be the height of hypocrisy.”

Trump’s son Eric, who now runs the Trump Organization with his brother Donald Trump Jr., told the Washington Post that the company would now use the federal E-Verify program to check whether all of its employees legally are able to work in the U.S. The Bedminster golf club did not use E-Verify, according to a federal database, and New Jersey does not require companies in the state to use the system.

“We’re starting with the golf properties, and we are going to be doing all of them,” he told the newspaper.

Earlier, he questioned on Twitter why so much attention was being paid to this story.

(1/2) To think that a dam broke in Brazil (with 37 fatalities & many missing), Venezuela is in shambles, and so much more, yet @NBCNews leads with another anti-Trump story (that among 10,000+ hospitality employees, a few admitted to giving fake IDs to gain unlawful employment), — Eric Trump (@EricTrump) January 28, 2019

(2/2) just shows how pathetic the #MSM has gotten. I must say, for me personally, this whole thing is truly heartbreaking. It demonstrates our immigration system is severely broken and needs to be fixed immediately. Congress, stop going to Hawaii on vacation and do your damn job! — Eric Trump (@EricTrump) January 28, 2019

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the issue of hiring unauthorized immigrants shows that the entire system needs fixing.

“I think that’s one of the reasons that the president wants to actually fix the problem,” she said at a press briefing Monday. “He’s one of the people that’s identified the fact that we have a problem and we should fix our immigration system. If Democrats want to get serious about fixing that, they have a president that’s more than happy to sit down with them and do exactly that.”

The Quinnipiac poll of 1,004 voters was conducted Jan. 25-28 with a margin of error of 3.7 percentage points.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @JDSalant or on Facebook. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.