But at the end of her dreaming and regretting, Mi-Choong O'Brien, 50, remains where she started, at the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, Va. For her crime -- she says she took $70, the restaurant says it was at least $11,000, and her plea agreement states $3,000 -- she was sentenced to three years, all but a month suspended. Now she is being detained under a 1996 immigration law that allows the United States to deport noncitizens with criminal convictions and sentences of a year or more.