Hundreds of unaccompanied asylum seeking children at risk of deportation from UK
Published by Professional Social Work magazine, 8 December, 2022
Unaccompanied children whose age is disputed in asylum processes are at risk of being deported to 'third country' destinations such as Rwanda.
Under 'safe third country' policy, the Home Office states that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are regarded as "not suitable" for transference.
However, there are no safeguards in place for children who are being treated as adults by the Home Office, charities warn.
Inaccurate age assessments mean children as young as 14 have been placed in immigration detention or adult accommodation on their own and without support.
The Home Office is increasingly disputing the age of asylum seekers claiming to be children. There were 2,761 disputes between April 2021-22, nearly three times the figure (907) for the previous year.
A recent Freedom of Information request carried out by the Refugee and Migrant Children's Consortium (RMCC) revealed that in 2021 more than 450 young people who had first been sent to adult accommodation or detention were later found to be children.
Nearly half this number (211) were moved to children’s services in the first three months of this year. The High Court also found in 2022 that a Home Office procedure where hundreds of children had been detained and age-assessed in under an hour by social workers ‘unlawful’ – the judge said the process lacked “essential safeguards”.
The Home Office maintains any age dispute "must be concluded before someone is relocated". However, the RMCC says it is already seeing cases where children detained as adults are being issued with 'notices of intent' to remove them from the UK.
A spokesperson said: "We are extremely concerned that due to the government's flawed approach to age disputes there is a significant risk that children will be removed.
“Young people who are treated as significantly over the age of 18 will generally find it difficult to obtain relevant expert advice on age and age assessments, whether they are placed in adult accommodation or adult detention.
“They may need advice from a community care lawyer. They will need support to access this – either from an immigration adviser who is aware of the need to signpost or from a support organisation that understands how to help a young person to access such advice.
“There is a significant lack of community care solicitors across the country and there can be significant delays in receiving advice where the young person is signposted.
"Changes introduced by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 will only make the process stricter and lead to yet more children being wrongfully treated as adults and placed at risk.”
Differences in the registration of births globally mean that many children arriving in the UK are unable to show official identity documents.
Documents may never have existed, or have been lost, stolen, or faked.
Determining age recently fell to the newly established National Age Assessment Board, and there are worries about how procedures will be implemented.
The RMCC said: “Without ID it is extremely difficult to determine a child’s age. Even those from similar ethnic backgrounds who have grown up in the same social and economic environment display significant physical, emotional, and developmental differences. These can be exacerbated by experiences of adversity, conflict, violence, and the migration process.”
In the past year the number of age assessments requested by the Home Office has increased by nearly 200 per cent. Diana Harris, an independent social worker working with people with unsettled immigration status, said: "I had one case recently where a young person had been age assessed as over 18, but the legal team and the child themselves stated they were under 18.
“They were placed in a hotel that was more like a hostel and left there struggling with their mental health, frightened - there were noises, banging, shouting at night.
"This person is saying they are in fact sixteen, so I was brought in complete an assessment on the detrimental impact of remaining in the accommodation and the young person’s best interests. But the child will probably have turned 18 by the time it is sorted out.
"In the meantime, they were left with no adult care to fend for themselves. These kids are coming in through centres like Kent, are being quickly age-assessed and then dispersed anywhere in the country.”