GREENSBORO â The morning after, Minerva Cisneros Garcia went to Kohls. âI looked around and walked around smiling like crazy,â Garcia said of browsing the aisles of her favorite store that day in 2019. âI remember a few people looking at me like, âAre you OK?â â The Winston-Salem mother of three had 24 hours earlier stood before a federal immigration judge in Charlotte in what is considered one of the toughest courtrooms in the country for appealing deportation orders. Garcia, who is originally from Mexico, had taken sanctuary in a church to avoid being deported. She followed in the steps of Juana Luz Tobar Ortega, the Asheboro seamstress originally from Guatemala who in 2017 became the first person in North Carolina to seek sanctuary from U.S. immigration officials at a church.