She stuck in my mind after that.

A few months after I met them, I heard Rosario’s reprieve had ended in deportation, and I flew back to Atlanta to see Fanny at the house where she had been living with another family. She didn’t have anywhere else to go; her father had left the family years earlier, before getting deported, and her older brother couldn’t look after her. I would end up following her for the next eight months.

Partly, I was interested in policy; I was an immigration reporter at the time, though I have since moved to Beirut to cover the Middle East for The Times. Under the Obama administration, Rosario’s lack of a criminal record and her status as the sole caretaker of an American citizen would most likely have protected her from deportation. But the Trump administration no longer gave those circumstances much weight.

Whenever I flew down to see Fanny, it was easy to forget the raw, impassioned debates over immigration that I was writing about back in New York. In Georgia, I spent hours watching Fanny doing her homework. Feeding her dog. Watching the same Disney Channel movie two nights in a row. Practicing her flute. The photographer, Melissa Golden, and I once spent three hours sitting around waiting for Fanny to wake up from a long after-school nap on the couch.

I sat through many afternoons of color guard practice and many hours of Fanny’s makeup routine. We went to the mall, the nail salon and Chick-fil-A again and again. Trying to get inside a teenager’s head, in other words, meant adopting a teenager’s daily routine. But it was important not just to report statistics and statements but also to see for ourselves how deportation was straining this family, day by day, month by month. Even if it didn’t always feel relevant in the moment. Even if it meant finding myself making toxic-blue slime out of Elmer’s glue with Fanny and her friends one night. (Their command of chemistry is frankly impressive.)

Rosario reentered the United States without documents and returned to Georgia at the end of 2017. In late March, after more than three months’ separation, Fanny moved back in with her mother, who stayed in hiding out of fear of being deported again. The toll of those months was quickly obvious to all of us. Fanny had grown up a lot while living apart from her mother, and they were finding it difficult to coexist again. Rosario was taken aback at how much independence Fanny had acquired when it came to makeup, money and outings. Fanny chafed at Rosario’s rules and need for secrecy.