Reading this on your phone? Stay up to date with our free mobile app. Get it from the Apple app store or the Google Play store.

OAKLAND — After years of trying to obtain green cards to live in the U.S. legally — and last-minute efforts to delay their imminent deportation this week — Highland Hospital nurse Maria Sanchez and her husband Eusebio will be on a plane Wednesday night bound for their native Mexico.

But in a wide-ranging interview with the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday night, Sanchez said she is studying all her alternatives, and Canada is one of them.

Not only does Canada “need good nurses,” she told a reporter, but Maria and her husband, Eusebio, must find jobs that pay enough to help support their three daughters who will remain in Oakland. The couple has saved some money to help cover those costs for a time, she said, but it will not last forever.

“My kids have to eat somehow,’’ Maria Sanchez said.

“I’ve been reading and reading about anything having to do with visas,” she said. “Just employ me and pay me so I can keep supporting my daughters. They deserve the chance of a very good education, and if I can give that to them, I will. That is something nobody can stop me from doing.’’

The saga of the undocumented couple, who immigrated to Oakland in the early 1990s and for years have sought to obtain legal status, ended suddenly at 2:38 p.m. Tuesday when a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent denied a stay of deportation that their Los Angeles-based attorney had filed on Friday.

That was an attempt to replace a previous, 90-day-long stay that ends at midnight on Wednesday, said their Los Angeles-based lawyer, Carl Shusterman — not at noon as he had previously believed to be the case.

But that effort — and his strategy to garner public sympathy and political sway for the family over the last week — came crashing down with ICE’s denial. They are now prohibited from returning to the U.S. for a decade, when they can begin the process all over again, according to federal law.

“As an ex-prosecutor, I totally believe in following the law,” Shusterman said Wednesday. “But the agency is given discretion to look at the individual circumstances and grant a stay. I’m disappointed they didn’t do that in this case.”

The lawyer said he has answered Maria Sanchez’s questions about her idea of trying to work and live temporarily in Canada, which he said comes with its own hurdles. But he said he will help the couple in any way he can.

Tuesday’s heartbreaking news was delivered by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who had intervened on the family’s behalf, and called Maria Sanchez in the late afternoon.

“She said that if they (immigration authorities) make an exception for me, they will be sending the wrong message to others in the (immigrant) community by telling them that this is OK,’’ said the devastated mother of four.

“She said that she was really sorry, and that she tried, but she couldn’t do much. But she wanted me to know that she was going to make sure the girls will be okay.’’

Feinstein last week called on the federal government to reverse the impending deportation, which she called “the cruel and arbitrary nature of President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.” She said she intends to introduce a “private bill” in the Senate on Sept. 5 on behalf of the Sanchez family, which seeks to overturn the deportation.

But Shusterman said that bill must not only be signed off by the U.S. Senate, but the U.S. House of Representatives, both of which are dominated by Republicans. And even if it did pass both houses, it would have be signed by President Donald Trump, whose election was fueled in part by his promise to crack down on illegal immigration.

The exhausted couple — who have spent the last week hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst — will fly to Mexico City at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday, taking their 12-year-old American-born son with them.

Their three daughters — 16-year-old Elizabeth, 21-year-old Melin and 23-year-old Vianney — will stay behind to care for one another in the Oakland home the family managed to finally buy last year.

Vianney, the only one of their children who was born in Mexico, has protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. She has already graduated from UC Santa Cruz. Melin is on track to graduate from UCSC next year, and her parents had pleaded with ICE to let them stay at least until next year to watch her graduate.

When they land in Mexico City, the couple will head back to their hometown of Santa Monica, in the state of Hidalgo, to map out their future. But the town is too small, she said, to employ the registered nurse and her truck driver husband. So they will have to make a living somewhere else.

“I’m tired, and overwhelmed. And sad and disappointed,’’ said the 46-year-old nurse. “How can somebody who goes to school for so many years and raises a good family, and pays taxes… in what way am I sending the wrong message?’’

Following her husband, Maria Sanchez moved to the Bay Area in the early 1990s. She 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.

Her husband, Eusebio, 48, 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.

Critics, however, say those who immigrated illegally to the U.S. should face the repercussions, and that federal immigration authorities have the right to deport them at any time.

Maria Sanchez challenged that notion on Tuesday, saying that when she first arrived in Oakland, she was young.

“And you don’t meet many young people who are 100 percent sure of what they will do in life,’’ she said. “But as you grow older, you try to change for the better, and that is what I did.’’

She also pointed out that she and her husband have spent the last 15 years trying to obtain green cards after one of her first employers agreed to sponsor her for citizenship in 2002.

Their requests were repeatedly denied by immigration judges, however, then overturned through appeals, allowing them to stay here temporarily. Their luck finally ran out in May when an immigration officer gave them 90 days to exit.

ICE spokeswoman Virginia Kice on Tuesday night again said that the couple’s case had undergone exhaustive review at multiple levels of the Department of Justice’s immigration court system.

And if immigration laws are not enforced, she said, it’s unfair 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.

Maria Sanchez remains thankful to all those who have helped her family’s efforts to stay in the U.S. Yet as sad as she is to leave her daughters, and the Bay Area, the wife and working mother is determined to make the best of her circumstances.

“Something good is going to happen,’’ Maria Sanchez said. “You know what we always say: When a door closes, a window opens. One day there will be another president who will not be Trump. And that person will consider the whole situation.’’

Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.