Children compelled to share rooms with adults as Home Office will get their age improper

Terrified little one refugees are being put vulnerable to abuse because the Home Office forces them to share rooms with unrelated adults, a brand new report reveals.

At least 1,300 unaccompanied kids – some as younger as 14 – had been wrongly put in unsupervised grownup lodging and detention in 18 months, figures present. Campaigners say the findings present there’s something “fundamentally wrong” with Home Office decision-making on the border.

Fourteen under-18s frolicked in grownup prisons after being charged with immigration offences after being wrongly age assessed between January 2022 and June 2023, it’s claimed. And Humans for Rights Network says it recognized 832 circumstances the place a toddler might have been sharing accomodation with unrelated adults – together with 50 who it was unable to seek out.

A 16-year-old woman, whose age has since been accepted, informed researchers: “When I said my age they said to me you are lying, so they took us to a private room and a lady asked me some different questions, she said ‘ok your age, I can guess your age is 22’.

“She mentioned since you arrive by boat, it’s essential to know what you might be doing, subsequently you might be over 18.” The teenager, from Eritrea and identified as Helen in the report, added: “The resort I’m in now, there are many folks, greater than my age, males greater than my age, I discover it fairly worrying right here.”

Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation – which produced the report along with the Refugee Council and Humans for Rights Network – said: “These new figures show that there continues to be something fundamentally wrong with Home Office decision-making at the border, and hundreds of children are suffering as a result.”

And Enver Solomon, chief govt of the Refugee Council, mentioned: “Each case is a child who is being put at risk and whose welfare is being forgotten. It is an alarming child protection failure and the Government must take urgent action so every child is kept safe.”