Sarah Sherman-Stokes

Opinion contributor

Last month, while volunteering with a refugee rights organization at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in Tijuana, Mexico, I found myself holding a Sharpie marker, asking the wide-eyed mother of a 2-month-old girl if I could write her name and date of birth on her baby’s back.

The mother, listening intently, responded without hesitation: Whatever will ensure they don’t take her. I couldn’t promise that her newborn — still nursing, sleeping in an infant carrier on her mother’s chest — would not be taken by U.S. immigration authorities. But I hoped that with her mother’s name and date of birth on her back, the child and her mother might one day be reunited.

Read more commentary:

As an undocumented worker, I cleaned Trump's golf club. Now, I'm a voice for all immigrants.

An illegal immigrant killed my daughter. Trump's right — we must complete the border wall.

Nielsen resignation doesn't change fact child sexual abuse at border is real emergency

As many Americans now know, this summer, policies carried out by former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen separated around 3,000 immigrant children, toddlers and infants from their parents. Because Nielsen failed — whether through malice or incompetence — to create a system to adequately track these children, many became lost in the system after being paired with sponsors, separated from their parents for months, or even indefinitely.

Nielsen's disgraceful tenure

Last week, news broke that Nielsen was resigning from her post. Though Nielsen executed and enabled the monstrous initial family separation policies pursued by the Trump administration, she had grown weary and even resistant to their threatened reinstatement, according to multiple reports based on unidentified administration officials and Nielsen allies. President Donald Trump wanted a DHS secretary more willing to sign on wholesale to his immigration agenda. And this included the return of large-scale family separation policies at the Southern United States border.

If these policies are reinstated en masse — despite litigation and public outrage, family separation continues to occur — children like that 2-month-old girl might meet the fate of another client of mine, a 9-year-old boy.

As his mother tells the story now, the boy was separated from her for exactly 48 days. She counted every single one of them. For the first 30, she had no idea where he was. Even if she had been able to speak with him on the phone, he might not have been able to tell her. Her 9-year-old is autistic, cannot read or write, and had sustained significant trauma in his native country before being ripped from his mother’s arms inside a detention center in Southern Arizona last spring.

News of Nielsen’s resignation was welcomed by immigrants and advocates alike. Not only was Nielsen responsible for policies that shattered the lives of thousands of families, she then appeared before Congress and allegedly lied about it. Before that, she oversaw the tear gassing at the border, the disastrous and recently enjoined “remain in Mexico” policy and gruesome deaths of migrant children in U.S. custody.

With Nielsen out, who will Trump use next?

And yet, Nielsen’s departure portends more Sharpie markers to come, as the president vets possible replacements who are even more likely to acquiesce — and even advance — his increasingly unlawful and inhumane anti-immigrant agenda.

On my second day of holding a Sharpie marker at the border, writing names and dates on children’s backs, 8-year-old twins in their pajamas approached me, asking for what they called tattoos. If having to tell a mother that a Sharpie marker might help ensure reunification with her newborn was a chilling experience, being asked for tattoos by children left me speechless. The creation of a reality in which Sharpie markers are the only means by which children can hope to see their parents again, is the creation of an America in which none of us should want to live.

Today, as our president considers who will oversee U.S. immigration policy, we have to ask, is this the country we want to be? And, if not, what are we going to do about it?

Sarah Sherman-Stokes is associate director of the Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program at Boston University School of Law. Follow her on Twitter: @sshermanstokes