Myrna Dick is desperate for her young son to take a nap, so she cajoles him with soft Spanish phrases.

“Vete a dormir, mijo,” she says, telling Zachary to sleep as he fumbles for Teddy Grahams. “Take the bear in your arms and the two of you go lie down.”

It’s a suburban life, in a place that hosts fishing derbies and Easter egg hunts and calls itself the “Garden Spot of the State.” But it’s a life that Zachary, snug in his cornflower-colored jumpsuit, was very nearly denied.

In 2004, the government tried to deport Dick. It charged that she once lied to gain entry to the United States, that she claimed she was an American when she was in fact a Mexican.

But Dick was pregnant, and a federal judge in Missouri said Dick’s fetus essentially was already an American citizen. He could not be expelled, and as a result, neither could she.

Until Zachary was born.

Claims renewed

Then, immigration officials reasserted their claims. In February, a federal appeals court gave immigration officials the right to bar the 31-year-old mother from the United States for life, separating her from her son, now 17 months old, and her American husband.

This time, the family’s case is attracting the attention of prominent legislators who say it symbolizes the contradictions of the broken U.S. immigration system. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, a research organization in Washington, nearly 5 percent of U.S. families are headed by illegal immigrants.

Illness brought her here

Dick was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and grew up in Santa Barbara Tutuaca, a mountain village of 3,000. Her father, Ramon Ochoa, told his 20 children stories of picking string beans and onions in California’s Central Valley, where he traveled in the 1950s and 1960s under the United States’ first guest worker program.

Two older sisters had left the family ranch in Santa Barbara to work in Texas, and would come back periodically with their children to stock her mother’s grocery store.

Myrna Dick poses with her infant son Zachary at their Raymore, Mo., home March, 7, 2006. In 2004, the government tried to deport Dick, who was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. It charged that she once lied to gain entry to the United States, that she claimed she was an American when she was in fact a Mexican. But Myrna was pregnant, and a federal judge in Missouri said Myrna's fetus essentially was already an American citizen. He could not be expelled, and as a result, neither could she. Now Dick faces deportation after a circuit judge gave immigration officials the right to bar her from the United States for life, separating her from her son and her American husband.

“Our skin would be black from working outside,” Dick said, “and my nieces would come in from America with their beautiful clothes and their dolls. Seeing them was like dreaming of being a star.”

When Dick, an epileptic, suffered from grand mal seizures, her father sold everything and the entire family moved to Texas so the 12-year-old could get treatment.

Passed over for amnesty

They overstayed a temporary visa and settled illegally in Oakleaf, near Dallas. Dick spent much of the rest of school in the nurse’s office, learning English in fits and starts.

No one can really explain why Dick was passed over during the 1980s amnesty, when millions of immigrants were allowed to stay. Most of her family, including both parents, were granted citizenship or permanent residency then.

Still, Dick came to think of herself as a proud Texan. At work one night, she met Brady Dick when he wandered into the Dallas sports bar where she was a hostess.

After a few months of dating, they married in a small courthouse wedding in 2002; that same year, Brady submitted an application for Dick to become a U.S. resident by marriage.

Stories differ

But when she went to renew her work visa in spring 2004, the federal government ordered her immediate deportation.

Everyone agrees that Dick crossed the desert in 1998 to go to her grandmother’s funeral in Chihuahua. She said smugglers led her and another woman through the sand for hours, where border agents found them on a deserted hill.

What’s in dispute is what happened next.

Michael Sharma-Crawford, her attorney, says Dick never claimed she was a U.S. citizen, but instead told officials she was attempting to enter the country illegally. The government says when agents took her fingerprints, she told them her name was Ivette Treviso-Frias (something she denies) and said she was American.

That lie, the government says, makes her ineligible to ever live in America.

Pregnancy

Six years later, the government reinstated the old deportation order under Treviso-Frias’ name to take Dick into custody. Dick was three months pregnant. For two weeks, nauseous with morning sickness, she was shackled to the floor and bused from a detention facility in Versailles, Mo., to Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Kansas City.

Sharma-Crawford says the file the Department of Homeland Security keeps under Dick’s name contains a jumble of fingerprints, photographs and alien identification numbers that arguably could belong to seven different people. One computer printout is labeled “wrong person.”

When lawyers from the Department of Justice appealed the district judge’s ruling, the government selected less than half of the 424 pages of documents to send to the 8th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals as evidence. In February, a three-judge panel ruled a set of fingerprints labeled “Ivette Treviso-Frias” were identical to fingerprints attached to one of the alien ID numbers linked to Myrna’s name.

Kris Kobach, who served as immigration adviser to former Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, says the statute that made false claim to citizenship a deportable offense was never intended to be applied years after the fact. When it became law in 1996, he said it was intended to stop dangerous criminals from coming across the border, not to deport a suburban mother.

“They’re taking the statute out of context,” said Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Her claim is that they’ve got the wrong person. And there are enough valid questions that Myrna Dick is raising that her case should be reconsidered.”