A newspaper investigation by ‘The Guardian’ has uncovered the alleged abduction of dozens of underage asylum seekers staying in a Brighton hotel run by the Home Office and falling into the hands of criminal gangs. These events seem to be repeated in other facilities in the south of England.
A worker of the company Mitie, subcontracted by the Home Office, and sources from the child protection services have reported the kidnapping of minors in the middle of the street who were put into cars.
«The minors are literally kidnapped in front of the building. They disappear and are never found again. The traffickers take them away in the middle of the street,» the source explained.
The police have repeatedly alerted the Home Office to the vulnerability of these minors staying in the hotel after arriving in the UK without any protection from criminal networks.
Some 600 unaccompanied minors have passed through the Sussex hotel in the last 18 months and 136 have been reported missing. More than half, 79, remain unaccounted for.
Mitie’s source has described how he personally saw minors being taken from a similar hotel in Hythe, Kent, run by the Home Office, and estimates that 10 percent of minors go missing a week.
Labor’s opposition Home Affairs spokeswoman, Yvette Cooper, has called the news «truly horrific and shocking» and called on the government to report how many minors have gone missing and what it is doing to find them.
The Minister of the Interior, «Suella Braverman, has failed despite the repeated warnings she has been given about the absolutely inadequate protections in the care of minors», Cooper pointed out.
«This is an absolute dereliction of the Home Office’s duties, a blatant failure to protect the safety of minors or to pursue the dangerous gangs who put them at terrible risk,» he added.
Official data estimates that unaccompanied minors spend an average of 16.5 days in Interior Ministry hotels before being taken care of by municipal social services in town halls across the country.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
