Hundreds of child asylum seekers have gone missing in UK, government admits - CNN

CNN  — 

Hundreds of kid asylum seekers person gone missing since the British authorities started lodging minors successful hotels owed to a strain connected the country’s asylum accommodation system, British Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick told lawmakers successful parliament connected Tuesday, amid calls for an probe into the matter.

Jenrick said Tuesday that astir 200 children person gone missing since July 2021. “Out of the 4,600 unaccompanied children that person been accommodated successful hotels since July 2021, determination person been 440 missing occurrences and 200 children inactive stay missing,” helium said.

Approximately 13 of the 200 missing children are nether the property of 16, and 1 is pistillate according to authorities data. The bulk of the missing, 88%, are Albanian nationals, and the remaining 12% are from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.

Jenrick blamed the occupation connected an summation successful migrant vessel crossings done the English Channel to the United Kingdom which near the authorities “no alternative” than to usage “specialist hotels” to accommodate minors arsenic of July 2021.

Although the contracted usage of hotels was envisioned arsenic a impermanent solution, determination were inactive 4 successful cognition arsenic of October with implicit 200 rooms designated to kid migrants, according to a study from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration.

British charities and migrant rights groups person agelong complained astir the atrocious conditions successful the country’s overwhelmed and underfunded asylum system.

The fig of asylum claims processed successful the UK has collapsed successful caller years, leaving radical successful limbo for months and years – trapped successful processing facilities oregon impermanent hotels and incapable to enactment – and fueling an intractable debate astir Britain’s borders.

The missing migrant children was archetypal reported successful British media connected Saturday, erstwhile the paper The Observer reported that “dozens” of asylum-seeking children were kidnapped by “gangs” from a edifice tally by the UK Home Office successful Brighton, confederate England.

Calls person since been mounting for an urgent probe into the matter, with the the absorption Labour Party, quality rights enactment the Refugee Council, arsenic good arsenic section authorities demanding urgent action.

The Home Office has called those reports untrue and successful a connection to CNN a Home Office spokesperson said: “The wellbeing of children successful our attraction is an implicit priority.”

The spokesperson added that they had “robust safeguarding procedures” successful spot and ” erstwhile a kid goes missing, section authorities enactment intimately with agencies, including the police, to urgently found their whereabouts.”

While the British authorities is without the powerfulness to detain unaccompanied minors, who are escaped to permission the hotels, Jenrick defended the UK Home Office’s safeguarding practices saying that records are kept and monitored of children leaving and returning to the hotels and that enactment workers are connected manus to travel children disconnected tract connected activities and societal excursions.

“Many of those who person gone missing are subsequently traced and located,” Jenrick told parliament.

Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, from the absorption Labour Party, blamed quality traffickers successful her effect to parliament saying “children are virtually being picked up from extracurricular the building, disappearing and not being found. They are being taken from the thoroughfare by traffickers.”

Cooper said “urgent and superior action” is needed to ace down connected gangs to support children and young radical safe.

“We cognize from Greater Manchester Police, they’ve warned asylum hotels and children’s homes are being targeted by organised criminals. And successful this case, determination is simply a signifier present that gangs cognize wherever to travel to get the children, often apt due to the fact that they trafficked them present successful the archetypal place,” she added. “There is simply a transgression web involved. The authorities is wholly failing to halt them.”

On Monday, UK foundation Refugee Action said that it is “scandalous that children who person travel to this state to inquire for information are being enactment successful harm’s way. Ultimate work lies with the Home Secretary, and her determination to tally an asylum strategy based not connected compassion, but hostility,” they added.

UK foundation the Refugee Council tweeted that they are “deeply acrophobic by the signifier of placing separated children successful Home Office accommodation, extracurricular of ineligible provisions, putting them astatine hazard of harm with implicit 200 of them having gone missing.”