Attorneys have joined an effort to help a Houston mother reunite with her son, a teenager with autism who was placed with immigration agents after being reported missing earlier this month.

More questions than answers remained in the case of 15-year-old Emmanuel Gonzalez-Garcia – family members say they haven’t yet seen Houston police video of their interaction with him or read the incident report. But Maria Garcia, his mother, was hopeful she might get to visit him at a federal facility sometime in the coming days.

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“This is Day 24 of Emmanuel being in federal custody, and we still don’t understand why,” said Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL Houston, an immigrant-aid organization, at a news conference Tuesday.

Advocates have been fuming over the Houston Police Department’s decision to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement after they found the teenager. Officials with the Houston Police Department said that they contacted ICE after coming into contact with Gonzalez-Garcia, who said he was homeless and from another country.

Police worked for more than four hours to confirm the child’s identity and find an acceptable person to leave him with, but couldn’t find anyone, officials said.

After exhausting other options, Houston police worked with immigration officials to place the child with the Office of Refugee Resettlement inside the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, officials said.

The police department’s policy stipulates that when officers encounter a person younger than 17, they are supposed to return the juvenile to parents or family, school, or Child Protective Services. Officials with the agency haven’t said whether CPS was called.

Gonzalez-Garcia had walked away from the corner of Clay and Hempstead streets in northwest Houston, where he was selling fruit with his mother on Oct. 4. Police found him Oct. 5, but Espinosa said no one told his mother for five days.

Police Chief Noe Diaz showed some members of city council video of the agency’s encounter with the 15-year-old, but officials with the agency have asked the Texas Attorney General’s Office for permission to withhold body camera video and an incident report, saying they were both part of an ongoing criminal investigation involving a juvenile.

Espinosa said that argument runs counter to what officers told Garcia, which is that the case had been closed.

Neither Mayor John Whitmire nor Diaz has contacted the family since Gonzalez-Garcia was turned over to federal custody, Espinosa said. The mayor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Attorneys for Garcia said Tuesday they are negotiating with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to arrange a time for her to visit her son, while at the same time filing court paperwork to reunite them and keep them both in the country.

Attorney Ross Miller said that two fundamental legal doctrines were ignored in the teenager’s case: Garcia’s right to care for her own child, and the requirement that authorities must take into account what’s best for the minor.

“They weren’t applied to the facts of the case,” he said. “Our number one goal, governed by that best interest of the child standard, is to reunite Manuel with his mother, where he belongs.”

Espinosa said that questions about Gonzalez-Garcia’s interactions with police officers will be answered when authorities release the police footage.

“(Police) say that they found Emmanuel and he’s visibly upset and he keeps rubbing his head. It’s because he wants to say something, but he doesn’t know how to express it, so he gets frustrated,” Espinosa said. “I think if we were to all see that video – including the mom, who has every right to see what happened – then it would clear some of these things up.”

Espinosa said the episode is another example of how local officials haven’t been transparent with the public over how the Houston Police Department interacts with federal immigration officials.

Espinosa was forcibly removed from city council chambers earlier this month after he confronted Chief Diaz over the officer’s remarks to the body about the incident.

This article originally published at Mother of Houston autistic teen in immigration custody still unable to see son.