The Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany (BKA) says about 4,800 unaccompanied child migrants went missing last year, including 431 under the age of 14, with the Bavarian Interior Minister warning they may eventually turn to crime.
With child advocates and politicians increasingly concerned by the growing number of unaccompanied child migrants going missing, Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann has sounded a note of caution as to the likely criminal outcome, reports German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The senior member of the centre-right Christian Social Union in Bavaria party said: “If we are not careful and do not rapidly integrate these young people into our society, the new attackers of tomorrow could soon come from the group of young refugees.”
Thomas Krüger, the President of the German Children’s Fund, is also concerned by the missing child migrants, although not for the same reason. He does think the numbers are inflated by multiple registrations and poor data reconciliation by authorities, but nevertheless accepts many are lost.
Mr Krüger’s worry is not so much that the missing child migrants will become criminals of the future, more that they themselves risk becoming the victims of criminals today. As such he has called for urgent investigations into the matter.
The BKA also believes not all of the 4,800 unaccounted for are in danger as it is thought that many left their youth accommodation to join friends or relatives. Nevertheless, criminal activity should not be excluded.
Minister Herrmann said that the “thousands of parents” of unaccompanied child migrants should think of what might happen when they “entrust their children to criminal smugglers to bring them to Europe”. In doing so he echoes concerns recently expressed by the European Union’s police agency — Europol.
As Breitbart London previously reported, over 10,000 vulnerable child migrants have gone missing after registering with state authorities in several European Union countries, and Europol fears gangs may be exploiting many for sex work and slavery.
Europol chief of staff Brian Donald said:
“Not all of them will be criminally exploited; some might have been passed on to family members. We just don’t know where they are, what they’re doing or whom they are with…
“…These kids are in the community, if they’re being abused it’s in the community. They’re not being spirited away and held in the middle of forests, though I suspect some might be, they’re in the community — they’re visible. As a population we need to be alert to this.”
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