Kansas City, Mo. ? The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a suburban Kansas City mother’s request to postpone her deportation order, a penalty she faces because courts found she lied about her citizenship years ago when she crossed the border illegally from Mexico, her attorneys said Friday.

Myrna Dick, 32, is married to an American citizen, and her 19-month-old son was born in the Kansas City area. Dick, who speaks fluent English, was raised in Chihuahua, Mexico, but spent the past two decades in the United States.

Justice Samuel Alito denied the motion for a stay of deportation Friday, immediately following the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal’s rejection of the same request, said Dick’s attorney, Michael Sharma-Crawford.

While the high court is still weighing whether to rehear Dick’s case, an eventual ruling in her favor still wouldn’t necessarily mean the immigrant mother could return to the U.S., Sharma-Crawford said.

“I’m very disillusioned,” Dick said in a telephone interview from San Diego, where she is preparing to leave the country today. “I’m not going to give up, but I just hope that people who have heard the tragedy of our lives will keep on struggling so that immigration laws benefit the many, many families who are in a situation like ours.”

Myrna Dick rests her head on her son, Zachary, as she waits Friday morning to depart Kansas City International Airport for San Diego before an impending deportation to Mexico today. The courts have ruled she lied about her citizenship when crossing the border illegally from her native Mexico.

The family’s case drew national attention in 2004, when Dick, then three months pregnant, was first ordered to leave the country. False claim to citizenship, the charge she faced, carries a penalty of a permanent ban from the U.S. A federal judge in Missouri made the decision to stave off Dick’s deportation because he said her fetus was an American citizen.

Earlier this week, a spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency’s case against Dick had not changed and that the government’s position was supported by numerous courts.

“Our job is to enforce immigration law, and that’s what we’re doing in this case, and hopefully restoring some integrity to the immigration system,” agency spokesman Carl Rusnok said Wednesday.

Dick and her husband, a voice engineer for Sprint Inc., believed they would raise Zachary, their toddler, on a cul-de-sac in Raymore, Mo. But Friday, Dick said the family was preparing to drive across the border today to resettle with family friends in Tijuana.

The family is holding out a last hope in an amendment sponsored by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, D-Mo., that could allow illegal immigrants with similar family situations to stay in the country.