We explore the photospheric and chromospheric magnetic field in an emerging flux region. An image of the equivalent width of the He I 10830 Å red blended component shows the presence of filamentary structures that might be interpreted as magnetic loops. We point out that the magnetic field strength in the chromosphere resembles a smoothed version of that found in the photosphere and that it is not correlated at all with the above-mentioned equivalent width map. Lacking other diagnostics, this suggests that one cannot discard the possibility that the chromospheric field we infer from the observations is tracing the lower chromosphere of the active region instead of tracing the magnetic field along loops. If the He I line is formed within magnetic loops, we point out a potential problem that appears when interpreting observations using only one component along the line-of-sight.