The recent case in Kent highlights a growing trend of asylum seekers lying about their age
Ten of the 19 migrants slated to be placed in foster homes or children’s care in Kent, England, turned out to be adults, The Sun reported on Monday.
Kent is the primary arrival point for migrants crossing the English Channel in small boats. Illegal crossings remain a hot-button issue, fueling anti-immigrant sentiment alongside a string of high-profile criminal cases linked to migrants. Nearly 1,000 undocumented migrants crossed into the UK in small boats over the past five days alone, according to government data.
A group of migrants in Kent County Council care was reassessed last year after staff raised concerns about their age, The Sun reported, citing government data released under freedom of information laws.
“This puts children already in foster or children’s homes in danger,” Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said. “We have seen absurd cases where illegal immigrants, including a Sudanese man with a receding hairline and facial hair, pretended to be children when they were clearly adults.”
The situation will “get worse now Labour’s Borders Act has passed, which no longer allows illegal immigrants to be treated as over-18 if they refuse to take an age-assessment test,” Philp added.
The Labour Party has lost significant ground to the Euroskeptic and anti-immigration Reform UK party in recent local and parliamentary elections. The government has tried several methods to tackle migration, including a plan championed by the Conservatives to relocate illegal migrants and asylum seekers to Rwanda, which was scrapped after Labour came to power in 2024.
The number of adult migrants posing as children has quadrupled over the past decade, reaching more than 1,000 last year, the Daily Mail reported, citing Home Office data.
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In 2022, the government pledged to improve methods for assessing the age of asylum seekers, including X-rays, CT scans, and MRI imaging. Last year, the BBC reported that authorities were planning to use AI technology to verify migrants’ ages.
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