Now Doralinda’s fate is tied to her cousin’s. The president is pitting Dreamers, one group of vulnerable children brought here by their parents, against perhaps the most vulnerable group of children, those who arrive here alone. Most of this population — around 60,000 young people apprehended in fiscal year 2016 — are children fleeing horrific gang and drug cartel violence in one of the most dangerous places on earth, in Central America, and who often make terrifying, sometimes lethal, journeys to beg for safety at our border.

The move has rightly enraged child advocates. “We are going to trade little children fleeing violence for older children who have lived their whole lives in America. It’s disgusting,” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission.

The United States is in the throes of a great debate: Do we want — can we afford — to remain a safe haven for people who, unlike economic migrants, come here running for their lives? This year the administration slashed the number of refugees the United States will allow by more than half.

We are at risk of becoming a country that turns its back on the most vulnerable: children from neighboring countries who show up at our border with no parents and no place to turn. And yet, in a response to a renewed uptick in the number of these children arriving at our border, that’s whom we are turning our backs on first.

Ms. Gonzalez is desperate to not lose the temporary legal status she received when she applied four years ago for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. It changed everything. She no longer had to live in fear of being stopped by the police or ICE agents in her hometown, Loganville, Ga. She could drive. Working as an elementary school teaching aide, she managed to save enough to start a year at Kennesaw State University, even though Dreamers in Georgia must pay out-of-state tuition, which can be more than twice as much as in-state fees. Stressing that her father worked 14-hour days picking tobacco so that she wouldn’t have to, she said, “I won’t let anything stop me.”

Still, she refuses to believe that Doralinda — who wakes up screaming with nightmares and crawls into bed with her — must be harmed by this country’s policies if Ms. Gonzalez is to be helped, that one woman could be happy and the other could be left fighting for her life.

“A country like ours should say: We value your life, we value you as a human. We are going to help you,” she told me.