The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the agency tasked with caring for unaccompanied migrant children, has allegedly implemented a secret policy in recent months allowing immigration agents and criminal investigators to interrogate those children and their potential U.S.-based sponsors, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week by Al Otro Lado, a San Diego-based binational organization that provides legal services and humanitarian aid to migrants.

Al Otro Lado’s lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, accuses Health and Human Services of violating its “statutory mandate to act in the best interest of children in its care.” The lawsuit seeks to make public through the Freedom of Information Act all records pertaining to the allegedly secret policy.

“Health and Human Services has a legal obligation to act with the best interests of the child in mind,” Cassandra Lopez, Al Otro Lado’s litigation director, said in an interview Friday. “Historically, HHS hasn’t been allowed to share information about the children’s cases … with (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or with other agencies, and that’s because they’re supposed to be doing everything they can that’s in the best interest of that child, and not working to … help ICE carry out enforcement activities.”

Lopez said Al Otro Lado is aware of deportations that have occurred as a result of ICE agents interrogating unaccompanied migrant children and their potential sponsors. She said it has become a widespread practice across the U.S.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, did not respond Friday to messages seeking comment.

Typically when an unaccompanied minor arrives at the U.S. border, the child is placed in the care of Health and Human Services, and specifically the Office of Refugee Resettlement, according to the lawsuit. Health and Human Services is supposed to play no role in the apprehension or initial detention of children and by law is not a party to children’s immigration proceedings.

As soon as the Office of Refugee Resettlement takes an unaccompanied child into its care, the agency is supposed to put that child in contact with their parents, guardians or other relatives and begin a process of finding the child a suitable sponsor living in the U.S., according to the lawsuit. Those sponsors are required to undergo background checks and complete an assessment process that identifies potential risks and safety concerns.

The lawsuit alleges that in recent months, ICE agents have been accompanying personnel from the Office of Refugee Resettlement during routine meetings with children and seeking to interrogate them without an attorney present. The suit contends that ICE agents have done the same with potential sponsors.

“Our concern is that there is no benefit to the child to have ICE agents present at those meetings,” Lopez said. “People are afraid of ICE. So if ICE is going to be present at those meetings, people will no longer want to be sponsors for unaccompanied children, which means kids will stay in custody, and they may be less willing to fight their immigration case or to pursue relief that they are eligible for.”

Lopez said nonprofits have been raising the alarm for months now that ICE agents and other immigration officers have been accompanying Health and Human Services personnel to routine meetings and welfare checks at sponsors’ homes.

“They’ll be there with an ICE agent who is then asking a bunch of questions about other people besides the child,” Lopez said. “ICE (also) seems to be riding along almost every time a sponsor clears the last hurdle to gain release of a child in an attempt to interrogate sponsors. In some cases, they have made an arrest at the sponsor appointment ORR scheduled.”

Lopez said the interrogation of unaccompanied children seems to have been particularly focused on children from Guatemala and Honduras.

Included in the lawsuit is an Aug. 5 email that Al Otro Lado obtained that was apparently sent by Adam Loiacono, ICE’s deputy principal legal advisor for enforcement and litigation. The email, which was sent to other ICE and DHS personnel, appears to lay out ICE’s legal justification for questioning unaccompanied migrant children at shelters operated by Health and Human Services.

The email stated that agents from Homeland Security Investigations, an agency under the DHS umbrella that’s focused on global organized crime, intended to interview unaccompanied migrant children in part as an effort to help Health and Human Services reunite the children with their families.

The email said that another goal of the interviews was to “take administrative action as appropriate … if the parent or guardian is unlawfully present in the US.” The email also stated that the children, who are entitled by law to an attorney “in legal proceedings or matters,” did not need legal counsel during the interviews with HSI agents because the interviews would not qualify as legal proceedings or matters.

Al Otro Lado’s lawsuit said the unaccompanied children, many of whom have “suffered trauma, abuse and persecution in their home countries,” are entitled to care and reunification by experienced teams dedicated to child welfare.

“Unaccompanied children should not be treated like criminals,” Al Otro Lado’s lawsuit argued.

The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the various federal agencies involved to publish all records pertaining to the alleged interrogations of the unaccompanied children and their sponsors.

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