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Triad Mom Recalls Her Close Call With Deportation

Last year, Garcia went into hiding after ICE agents came for her over her immigration status. She spent 3 months in a Greensboro church with her sons

WINSTON-SALEM, NC — A Trump administration policy has been making headlines across the nation in the last week. The administration instituted a Zero Tolerance immigration policy in April which would see that every adult who entered the country illegally is prosecuted. Last month, Homeland Security began referring all cases of illegal entry to the Justice Department for prosecution.

"The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility. It won't be," said President Donald Trump.

If the adults sent to holding cells have kids with them, the kids are taken away and held in a separate facility away from their parents. This has led to heated protests and outrage, across the country. A Triad woman knows the heartache about being separated from her children, because of immigration.

"This is America, come on! This is a wonderful land and for them to be doing this... I will beg them not to do this," said Minerva Garcia who has called Winston-Salem home for 18 years.

Last year, Garcia went into hiding after ICE agents came for her over her immigration status. In 2013, ICE granted Garcia a stay of removal which would be renewable each year due to needs of her blind son. But last May, she was ordered to leave the country within a month. In June, she took sanctuary at the Congregational United Church of Christ in Greensboro with her 2 young American born children.

"I didn't like that experience. It was very sad and I used to feel like is this right what I am doing, hiding in a church?" said Garcia who spent 3 months in the church.

"I used to feel like a small animal hiding there in the church, hidden in there for nobody to come and take me away from my house, from where I live and from my family," added Garcia.

In October, a federal judge vacated her deportation order and she was free to go home. Garcia is unable to work because her work permit was revoked in the process. She heads back to court later this year. For Garcia though, news about the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, separating families at the border troubles her.

"For America doing this, it is horrible, they should not be doing this. Do not do that please," Garcia pleaded.

Moises Serrano is an immigration activist and himself a DACA recipient say this is a fear tactic.

"The practice of separating children from their mothers is extremely archaic and it is absolutely awful and enraging that we have to do this in 2018 in America," said Serrano.

The government has refused to back down. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen says officials will not apologize for enforcing immigration laws that result in the separation of children from their parents.

"We have seen a staggering 315% increase in illegal aliens fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into this country," said Nielsen at the National Sheriff's Association conference in New Orleans on Monday.

Nielsen says agents are not acting cruelly, but are enforcing the laws passed by Congress. She says past administrations asked immigration agents to look the other way when families crossed the border illegally, but no longer.

President Trump said his administration is being scapegoated for enforcing existing immigration laws. The policy has resulted in nearly 2,000 minors separated from their families over six weeks and is drawing strong criticism from lawmakers from both parties and advocates who call the tactic inhumane.

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