An investigation into an asylum seeker posing as a 15-year-old boy at an English school has concluded he is a grown man.
The man was placed in the Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk, after entering the United Kingdom illegally and claiming asylum, with the Home Office accepting that he was a “child”.
There was a backlash from parents after pupils circulated pictures of the Middle Eastern migrant on social media, with one accompanying a picture of him with the caption: “How’s there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?”
The outcry triggered a re-investigation of his case which has now confirmed he is a grown man, and may face deportation.
The Home Office is declining to say what age they now believe him to be, but he is reportedly around 6’1″ and had a Facebook account which described him as having been a student at the Islamic Azad University in Abadan, Iran, and showed pictures of him drinking beer and sporting a moustache and heavy stubble.
“I’m ashamed both for the school and the Government for allowing this to happen,” said one parent, who kept his young daughters out of the school until the man was removed.
“They have both failed to protect our children. The teachers should be sacked.”
Theresa May agreed to allow thousands of supposed “unaccompanied minors” into Britain from safe, first world France under the so-called Dubs amendment, but ended up capping the intake at 480.
It is believed that this is because the Government was embarrassed when the migrants brought to Britain under the scheme turned out to be predominantly young males pushing the upper end of the 17-year-old limit to be considered a “child”, with many having visibly lined faces and receding hairlines.
The British public had been led to believe the migrants taken in under the scheme would be toddlers and pre-teens, reminiscent of the Jewish children who arrived in Britain before the outbreak of the Second World War through the Kindertransport rescue programme, and so pictures of the people who actually arrived caused serious disquiet — with the Home Office going so far as to build a series of screens to hide the new arrivals from photographers.
In one year, some two-thirds of “child” migrants whose claims about their ages were investigated were confirmed to be adults.