There’s a little girl being held in a room in Chicago, and she shouldn’t be here. She should be with her mother in California, not scared and surrounded by strangers in a strange city.

I don’t know the little girl’s name, but I know she’s enduring a psychological hell no child should face. And I know who’s responsible for bringing her here, for taking her from her mother and transporting her across an unfamiliar country for reasons that don’t stand the test of decency.

It’s the United States government. Our government. That’s who is responsible for the frightened child tucked away somewhere in our city.

A lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union identifies the girl only as “S.S.” She has been here for months. She spent her 7th birthday at a Chicago facility run by the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, a facility intended for immigrant children who entered the country without a parent.

But S.S. has a parent. The lawsuit calls her “Ms. L.” She’s 39 and is being held at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego, which is run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

According to the ACLU lawsuit, Ms. L fled Congo, formerly Zaire, fearing “near certain death” and arrived at a U.S. port of entry near San Diego on Nov. 1. She and her daughter did not try to sneak in. They went directly to border agents, and the mother communicated that she was seeking asylum, which can be granted to people who have suffered persecution or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

Per the lawsuit: “Based on her expression of a fear of returning to Congo, Ms. L. was given an initial screening interview before an asylum officer. The initial interview requires the asylum officer to determine whether the applicant has a significant possibility of ultimately receiving asylum. The officer determined that Ms. L. did have a significant possibility of ultimately receiving asylum and therefore allowed her to move on to the next stage of the long asylum process.”

Ms. L followed the proper procedures for an asylum seeker.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and one of the attorneys representing Ms. L and her daughter, said in an interview: “She has a genuine fear, she’s not a criminal, she’s not a terrorist, she presented herself at the border and said she needs help.”

Four days after their arrival, Gelernt said, immigration officers in San Diego took the daughter into another room. Once the little girl was gone, Ms. L was handcuffed.

“Then she hears the daughter screaming frantically,” Gelernt said. “The daughter is taken away, and the mother doesn’t speak to the daughter for four days. In those four days, she has no idea what has happened to her daughter.”

Since then, mother and child have been allowed to speak to each other only six times by phone, never with video. Six times. In nearly four months.

“Chicago might as well be the moon for this family from a little village in the Congo,” Gelernt said. “They have no idea why they’re separated, where each other are.”

From the lawsuit: “S.S. is scared and misses her mother, and wants to be reunited with her as soon as possible. Each time S.S. is able to speak with her mother on the phone, she is crying.”

She thinks her mother is in prison. She’s a 7-year-old child whose native tongue is Lingala and she has spent four months in a facility in Chicago for no good reason.

Except, apparently, to send a message. That’s what this is really about, after all.

Immigration hardliners in our government think one way to deter immigrants and asylum seekers from coming here is to separate children from their parents when they arrive.

In March 2017, when White House Chief of Staff John Kelly was the Secretary of Homeland Security, he said DHS was considering separating families caught crossing the border with Mexico into the United States.

He described it as a way to deter parents from bringing their children through what he called the “very, very dangerous network that brings them up from Mexico.” The idea was met with considerable outrage, and it never became official policy.

But it’s happening, and the 7-year-old Congolese girl in Chicago — who didn’t come through a dangerous Mexican network and whose mother did nothing to disguise her intention to seek asylum — is just one example. Gelernt said there are reports of hundreds more.

The ACLU’s lawsuit says the government’s action is unconstitutional: “The Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not permit the government to forcibly take a 7-year-old child from her mother, without justification or even a hearing.”

Simply put, this child has become a pawn in a sickeningly mean-spirited governmental experiment, one that stands in stark contrast to what America represents.

Or at least what America used to represent. I honestly don’t know anymore.

I don’t know what kind of country handcuffs a mother who fears for her life and hauls her young daughter more than 2,000 miles away.

I don’t know what kind of country ignores statements like this from the American Academy of Pediatrics: “Federal authorities must exercise caution to ensure that the emotional and physical stress children experience as they seek refuge in the United States is not exacerbated by the additional trauma of being separated” from their families. “Proposals to separate children from their families as a tool of law enforcement to deter immigration are harsh and counterproductive.”

I contacted Homeland Security and asked them for comment on this situation.

Press Secretary Tyler Houlton responded via email: “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on pending litigation. Thanks.”

I emailed back and asked a more general question: “Is it DHS policy to separate the children of asylum seekers from a parent when the parent is not being prosecuted for anything?”

No response.

I emailed again and asked an even more general question: “Can you or someone at DHS speak to me about the overall policy for handling asylum seekers who have children?”

Again, no response.

There’s a little girl in Chicago who shouldn’t be here. She should be in the arms of her mother.