Thousands of unaccompanied children, including one aged two years old, have been subjected to a little-known immigration enforcement operation, which includes police fingerprinting and photographing, soon after arriving in the UK.
Operation Innerste is a multi-agency initiative that was rolled out in 2018 and is designed to protect children newly arrived in the UK from falling into the hands of traffickers. Home Office sources said the two-year-old whose details were recorded as part of this operation was not photographed or fingerprinted and was accompanied by their teenage mother.
