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OAKLAND — Maria and Eusebio Sanchez are not exactly high priority targets for deportation. They aren’t drug lords, convicted criminals or the “bad hombres” the president wants to be rid of.

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Separated by deportation, this California family is learning how to live without their father But the couple are undocumented immigrants. And, after moving to the Bay Area in the early 1990s from a small town in Mexico, they have worked hard to embrace the American Dream.

Over the years, Maria, 46, rose from being a housekeeper at an East Bay nursing home to become a registered nurse at Highland Hospital today, caring for patients with cancer, heart, and kidney disease.

Eusebio, 47, graduated from construction jobs to become a full-time truck-driver for the last 12 years. They paid taxes, obeyed the law, and sent two of their four children to college.

Tuesday all that ends when the couple is deported back to Mexico — one day after Eusebio’s 48th birthday.

“I just want to say to people: I’m not here in the country to take anything away from anybody,’’ said Maria, who arrived in 1994 not speaking a word of English, then enrolled in classes to learn the new language.

“My husband has always worked, he does not get himself in trouble,’’ Maria said, reciting her family’s values and history.

Her children do well in school, where she has volunteered over the years while holding down a series of jobs; the family does not depend on any government programs.

And, Maria said, “I do the best I can to make a difference in the lives of my patients.’’

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Yet after years of trying to obtain green cards to stay in the U.S. legally, their requests denied by immigration judges, then overturned through appeals, their luck finally ran out in May when an immigration officer gave them 90 days to exit.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice said that over the last 15 years, the Sanchez’s immigration case has undergone exhaustive review at multiple levels of the Department of Justice’s immigration court system, which is administered by the Executive Office for Immigration Review.

“The courts,” she said, “have consistently held that neither of these individuals has a legal basis to remain in the U.S.,” and had already granted them stays of removal.

“This administration is committed to the rule of law and to enforcing the laws established by Congress,’’ she said. “When we fail to enforce those laws, what message are we sending to the millions of people who respect that process and are waiting outside the U.S. now for visas that will enable them to enter the country lawfully?”

The couple have tickets for a United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Mexico City for Tuesday. They are prohibited from returning to the U.S. for a decade, when they can begin the process all over again, according to federal law.

“I’ve fought for so long that I really don’t know what to do anymore,’’ Maria said, who at the very least would like to stay just one more year to attend her second daughter’s graduation from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

The couple’s lawyer, Carl Shusterman, a veteran Los Angeles-based immigration attorney and one-time lawyer with the former U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, said that because they have already gone through the system and have been denied, there is not much he can do for them.

But the decision by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, he said, is “purely discretionary.’’

“If they want to give her the extension, they could do it,’’ said Shusterman, who has scheduled a 10 a.m. Thursday morning press conference at the couple’s Oakland home to publicize their plight — and possibly delay the deportation.

Critics, however, say the law must be followed, and those who immigrated illegally to the U.S. should face the repercussions. ICE has the right to deport them at any time, they say.

Maria and Eusebio’s 23-year-old daughter Vianney, the oldest of their four children and the only one born in Mexico, has protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She has already graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz. Their second oldest, 21-year-old daughter Melin plans to graduate from UCSC next year. They have two other children, Elizabeth,16, and son Jesus,12.

The couple plans to take Jesus with them to Mexico; the three daughters will stay behind to care for one another in the Oakland home the family managed to finally buy last year.

But the thought of being separated from her parents is overwhelming to Melin Sanchez, who is majoring in human biology at UCSC and hopes to become a pediatrician.

“I’m almost done with college and my parents won’t even be there to graduate me — we won’t be together to celebrate that,’’ she said.

The irony, said Shusterman, is that his law firm represents more than 100 U.S. hospitals preparing for a nursing shortfall by 2025 that some experts predict will be more than twice as large as any nursing shortage since the mid-1960s. Those hospitals, he said, already are looking for both U.S. and foreign-born RNs, and willing to pay a range of fees to make that happen.

Sara Norton, a registered nurse at Highland Hospital who has worked alongside Mendoza-Sanchez for the last two years, is heartbroken over the thought of her friend leaving.

“She has her family here, she built her life here. She worked for everything she has,’’ said Norton.

The couple’s deportation saga began in 2002 when two of Maria’s nursing home co-workers reported her immigration status to their boss after she was promoted to supervise them.

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The company did not report her to authorities, however, but sought to sponsor her permanent residency. When she hired an attorney to help her, that set the couple on its years-long quest in immigration court to plead for green cards. They were allowed to work with a federal employment authorization document until their immigration case was resolved in some way.

Meanwhile, the owners of the nursing home were so impressed with Maria’s work, she said, that they transferred her to another one of their nursing homes. She later moved on to become the home’s receptionist, then a nursing assistant, licensed vocational nurse and, most recently, a registered nurse employed by the hospital.

“Nursing is not just about giving people pills and treatments,’’ said Maria. “It’s a lot about compassion and human kindness. It’s about healing the body, and the mind.’’

She said she feels very lucky to be a nurse, and derives great satisfaction in caring for her patients, especially when they compliment her work — no matter how sick they may be.

“I always tell them: ‘As long as there is life, there is hope.’’’

Bay Area News Group staff writer Tatiana Sanchez contributed to this report.