The United Kingdom's government has admitted that roughly 200 young asylum-seekers have gone missing from hotels in which they have been housed since 2021.
The number represents a group of missing children out of about 4,600 asylum-seeking children who arrived in the UK. Britain's immigration minister, Robert Jenrick, said that the situation is "extremely concerning" as while 440 children have disappeared, roughly half were returned to their accommodations.
Hundreds of Missing Child Asylum-Seekers
It was customary for asylum-seekers who arrived in the UK to be housed in hotels while the government was processing their cases. The process usually takes up to several months to be resolved, leaving immigrants in a state of limbo.
Jenrick said that most children who were reported missing were teenage boys from Albania, adding that he had not seen evidence to support that they were abducted. In a statement, opposition lawmaker Yvette Cooper claimed that a criminal network was involved in the disappearances, as per CBS News.
Cooper added that the government failed to address the issue by stopping the criminal network she spoke of. Dozens of children were reported kidnapped by gangs over the weekend. They were supposedly taken from a hotel that housed asylum-seekers in the English coastal city of Brighton.
An unnamed whistleblower from a company that the British government contracted said that children were literally being picked up from outside the building where they were staying. They added that the young immigrants were being taken from the street by traffickers.
In a statement, Britain's Home Office said that it was not accurate news that children were being kidnapped, noting that they were free to leave their accommodations if they wished. Cooper said that the situation was a total dereliction of duty.
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Lack of Government Support
Roughly 13 of the 200 children reported missing were aged under 16 years, and one is believed to be female, based on government data. According to CNN, approximately 88% of the missing children were of Albanian origin, while the remaining 12% were either from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, or Turkey.
While Cooper blamed the government for the situation, Jenrick related it to an increase in migrant boat crossings through the English Channel to the UK. He said that this left the government with no alternative other than to use "specialist hotels" to accommodate the immigrant minors as of July 2021.
While the contracted use of the hotels was designed as a temporary solution, there are still four in operation, with more than 200 rooms designated to child migrants as of October last year. For a long time, British charities and migrant rights groups have argued against bad conditions in the country's overwhelmed and underfunded asylum system.
Ministers were under pressure last year over poor living conditions and overcrowding at a migrant holding facility. They also faced threats of legal action from various rights groups and a public sector workers' union that criticized the lack of effective measures by the government, said Reuters.
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