One of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ campaign slogans is a simple: We’re not going back. That can mean many things to different people, but for me, it recalls a singular moment from Donald Trump’s presidency.

In 2017, shortly after the Trump administration began separating children from their families at the border, a draconian move to curb the number of migrants, I was tipped off to a lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union was filing to get a Congolese mother and her daughter reunited.

They were among the first to be separated, the 6-year-old literally pulled from her mother’s arms by immigration officers in San Diego, even though the pair had entered the country seeking asylum and followed all the appropriate steps.

The little girl had been flown to a facility in Chicago – where I worked at the time as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune – while the mother remained at a detention center in........

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