Immigrant rights groups sued the federal government on Tuesday to compel the Obama administration to release documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) regarding the use of the expedited removal process against families with children.

The court filing is the latest round in the battle over what immigrant rights groups describe as a “deportation mill” located in rural New Mexico. The fight began in June when the Department of Homeland Security opened a remote, makeshift detention facility in Artesia, New Mexico, to detain women and children fleeing violence in Central America.

Immigrants rights groups in August sued on behalf of mothers and children locked up at Artesia, claiming the Obama administration had enacted a new “expedited removal” policy as a way to fast-track deportation and avoid adjudicating asylum claims from the mothers and children.

This most recent court filing seeks to compel the release of documents regarding the use of this expedited removal process against families with children, including those detained at the family detention center in Artesia.

The Obama administration has not publicly released information about the policies and procedures governing its operations at the Artesia facility, despite what the groups describe as potentially life-threatening consequences for the women and children detained there.

They say the release of these policies and procedures is particularly urgent given that the government has opened another family detention center in Karnes, Texas, and has announced plans to open a massive 2,400-bed family detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

“Over the past several months, the Obama administration has overseen a dramatic increase in its practice of locking up mothers and children, with very little public explanation of this change in policies,” Melissa Keaney, staff attorney for the National Immigration Law Center, said in a statement. The Law Center is just one of the organizations involved in the litigation.

“Before they open the biggest family detention facility yet, federal officials should explain why they’ve decided to place toddlers and their mothers behind barbed wire and then whisk them back to the dangerous situations they fled,” Keaney said.

Government officials created Artesia to limit successful asylum claims by creating a new, more stringent “expedited removal” system that results in the denial of meritorious asylum claims, according to the allegations in the lawsuits. Immigrant rights groups allege the Obama administration’s expedited removal policies violate long-established constitutional and statutory law by, for example, drastically restricting communication—including communication with attorneys and giving virtually no notice to detainees of important interviews used to determine the outcome of asylum requests.

According to the complaint, mothers have no time to prepare, are rushed through their interviews, are cut off by officials throughout the process, and are forced to answer traumatic questions, including detailing instances of rape, while their children are listening.

“Lawyers representing clients in Artesia report that the processes are anything but fair and fall far short of the government’s obligations to provide due process,” said Melissa Crow, legal director of the American Immigration Council, following the filing of the FOIA litigation. “Compounding these injustices is DHS’s refusal to provide basic information about the policies and procedures that apply in these cases.”

The groups say that the government’s new policies at Artesia also create a host of procedural obstacles for asylum applicants and hope this FOIA litigation shines light on the detentions in Artesia.

“The American people have a right to know the truth about what is happening at Artesia,” Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “This lawless lack of transparency will cost lives.”