Migrant children could be mistakenly sent to Rwanda if the Home Office wrongly decides they are adults, campaigners have warned. The Refugee Council raised the concerns after highlighting errors it claims were made in some of the department’s age assessments for youngsters who have sought asylum in the UK.
The charity said it had “already had to intervene to stop children who were incorrectly assessed as adults from being detained awaiting removal to Rwanda”. It called on the Government to make sure no child deemed to be an adult by the Home Office is “threatened” with deportation to the east African nation until a “professional assessment” by a social worker had taken place.
The Home Office previously insisted lone migrant children would be exempt from being sent to Rwanda, although families could be in line for removal. It comes as Channel crossings resumed after a five-day hiatus.
A report published by the charity on Friday said 94% of 233 children it supported last year were wrongly considered to be aged over 18 by the Home Office. Only 14 were found to be adults.
In more than half of the cases the Government department claimed the children were at least 25 if not older, according to the findings. Enver Solomon, the charity’s chief executive, said the blunders were down to “hasty and woeful” decision-making and that such mistakes leave children at risk of abuse and neglect, as well as without proper support or education.
He said: “Every day refugee children are at risk of abuse and neglect because hasty, woeful decision-making routinely mistakes them for adults. Time and again the Government claims that people are always lying about their age but the evidence shows they are not."
In January the then home secretary Priti Patel called in scientific advisers in a bid to use X-rays and other medical checks on asylum seekers to stop grown men “masquerading as children” on their applications.
The Government needs to be more transparent by publishing “adequate and accurate” data on the subject so the true scale of the problem can be known, the charity said.
Since Ms Patel announced her plan to send migrants to Rwanda in April, more than 27,000 people have made the crossing.
Prime Minister Liz Truss said the Government would press ahead with the plan, which has so far been beset by a series of legal challenges.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Age assessments are challenging but vital. Children are at risk when asylum seeking adults claim to be children, or children are wrongly treated as adults."
For more stories from where you live, visit InYourArea.
