More than 200 asylum-seeking children go missing in the UK

Over 200 asylum-seeking children, mainly from Albania, disappeared from government housing in the U.K., causing concern over migration policies. Photo courtesy of Alisdare Hickson via Flickr.

By Kiera McLaughlin ’26

Staff Writer

Content warning: This article mentions human trafficking and involuntary sex work.

An investigation by The Observer broke the news in mid-January that over 200 asylum-seeking children are missing in the United Kingdom, The New York Times reported. NPR reported that Robert Jenrick, the minister for immigration in the U.K., notified lawmakers that more than 200 children and teenagers under 18 were missing from government-approved accommodations, most of whom were teenage boys from Albania. 

According to The New York Times, this government-approved housing consists of hotels, where asylum seekers stay until the Home Office moves them to a more stable location. Yvette Cooper, head of immigration policy for the Labour Party, explained to The New York Times that “there is a pattern here but no one is properly investigating.” She went on to say that “there is no targeted unit going after them and saying, ‘this is a pattern,’ where young people are being trafficked across the channel and then into cannabis farms — or into prostitution in some of the worst cases — but into organized crimes, being picked up from outside these hotels.’”

According to an article by BBC News, there has been an exponential increase in Albanian migrants coming to the U.K. over the past three years. The New York Times reported that in the last year, approximately 40,000 people made the trip across the channel to the U.K., including 13,000 Albanians. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been working towards slowing the number of migrants coming to the U.K. and refusing to grant asylum to many. 

An article by The Observer explained that these goals to create strict immigration laws have worked in traffickers’ favor, as some traffickers have been exploiting the Home Office’s policy of deporting asylum seekers to Africa in order to target young asylum seekers. “Traffickers tell them they’ll be sent to Rwanda if they stay in the hotel,” sources told The Observer.

The Guardian reported that their whistleblower who works at a hotel in Hythe, Kent, believes that approximately 10 percent of the children seeking asylum in the U.K. disappeared each week. The article continued to explain that there are many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in the U.K. Figures published by the Guardian show that in hotels run by the Home Office, 282 children have gone missing in the six months between April and October, and seventy had not been found. 

Many organizations and the Home Office are disputing who is to blame for the lack of action on behalf of these children. Al-Jazeera reported that “rights groups condemned the [U.K.] government, while The Adolescent and Children’s Trust (TACT), a fostering charity, said the Home Office had ignored its calls to place the children in care homes.”

According to The Guardian, many asylum-seekers in the U.K. have been met with anti-migrant protests. The Guardian reported that an organization called HOPE Not Hate, which tracks far-right activity, identified five anti-migrant demonstrations that took place over the weekend. Clare Moseley, the founder of Care4Calais, a volunteer-run refugee charity, has called out the U.K. government for not protecting asylum seekers, according to the Guardian. When speaking of the U.K. government’s lack of action in defense of asylum seekers, Moseley said that “not having documents makes you vulnerable and makes it difficult to stand up for yourself. Intimidating asylum-seekers is an act of pure cowardice. We need a government that shows leadership and protects the vulnerable rather than empowering bullies by using damaging and divisive rhetoric.”  Rebecca Hamlin, a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, echoed these sentiments and said in an interview with Mount Holyoke News that “the anti-immigrant politics in the U.K. is very toxic, and portrays a lot of people with legitimate claims for protection under international and domestic law as illegal and undeserving.”

The roles of this rising anti-migration movement in the U.K. and the response by the government have led to unrest and fear for asylum-seekers around the country, according to NPR. As reported by NPR, Labour Party lawmaker Peter Kyle pointed out in the House of Commons that “the uncomfortable truth for us is if one child who was related to one of us in this room went missing, the world would stop. But in the community I represent a child has gone missing, then five went missing, then a dozen went missing, then 50 went missing and currently today 76 are missing and nothing is happening.” While the number of asylum-seeking children placed in hotels by the Home Office increases, people like Yvette Cooper, Clare Moseley and Peter Kyle continue to speak up for the missing children seeking asylum.