More than 50 child asylum seekers still missing after disappearing from Kent care | Immigration and asylum

More than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared shortly after arriving in the UK and while in the custody of authorities are still missing, according to data obtained by the Guardian.

It is believed that many of the missing children arrived on small boats or hiding in the back of trucks and were abducted by smugglers. The city is usually where they come from.

Freedom of information data from Kent county council (KCC), controlled by Reform UK, documented 345 children missing in their area; 56 of them are still missing.

Between 2021 and 2023, when the Home Office operated two hotels for children in Kent and hotels in other areas, 132 children disappeared from these two hotels. 108 of these were later found, but 24 are still missing. Between 2020 and August 2025, 213 children disappeared from the municipality’s reception centers for this group of children; 182 have been found and 32 are still missing.

In both cases, Albanian children were the largest group lost; They accounted for half of the total number in Ministry of Internal Affairs hotels (68) and more than a quarter in reception centers (65). The second and third largest nationalities lost in both places were Afghans, followed by Iranians.

Esme Madill, of the Immigrant and Refugee Children Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre, said: “These figures are shocking. Behind every number is a frightened child who has already suffered appalling human rights abuses before arriving in the UK in search of safety. “When we represent children who flee after being trafficked while ‘lost’ in the UK, we see how their mental and physical health is permanently damaged by the abuse they experience during this time.

“The disappearance of a child represents a massive failure of the state to protect the most vulnerable and abused people in their care. They number in the hundreds.”

He said more needs to be done to find missing children. “They did not choose to ‘disappear’. These children should be playing football in the park and studying for their GCSEs, not serving smuggling gangs under the conditions we know of, such as being chained to furniture, physically and sexually assaulted and punished by starvation.”

In December 2023, following a long-running high court case into the disappearance of lone child asylum seekers in all Home Office hotels, the practice of routinely housing children in hotels was ruled to be unlawful. KCC instead agreed to increase protection for these children by expanding the use of reception centres. Since the court’s decision, 44 more children have disappeared from these centers, 10 are still missing and 34 have been found.

Patricia Durr, chief executive of Every Child Protected Against Trafficking England, said such data was always worrying.

“When a child goes missing, the risk of exploitation increases significantly and they certainly become more vulnerable to exploitation and trafficking,” he said.

“The research we have done over the years shows that [much] “Unaccompanied children are at greater risk because they have been separated from their homes, families, friends and communities, and may have been smuggled into the UK, abducted en route or trafficked upon arrival.”

He called on the government and public authorities to “prioritize the protection of children over other considerations, provide unaccompanied children with the care and protection they need, and ensure that all decisions are made in the best interests of children.”

A KCC spokesman said: “Any child or young person who is left without care is a serious concern and we make every effort to protect them.

“Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children are vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation due to their separation from their families and the circumstances of their journey to the UK.”

The spokesman said qualified social workers assess the risk of children being exploited through safeguarding protocols used in partnership with the police and other agencies such as the Home Office.

“KCC also refers children to mechanisms and services to help manage the risk of exploitation in the UK, including the national referral mechanism and the Independent Child Trafficking Protection Service. Even then, it remains difficult to prevent all children from going missing.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The safety and welfare of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children remains a priority and we take the disappearance of children extremely seriously. We continue to review our systems regularly for updates if this occurs and we share relevant information with local police forces and local authorities investigating the matter.”