The UK government now aims to become the legal parent of unaccompanied child migrants who land in Britain, a report on Wednesday has claimed.
Britain’s Home Office looks set to become the corporate parent of thousands of migrants described as being children, a report by The Times has claimed.
The move is reportedly part of the UK’s latest legal bill aimed at getting the ongoing channel migrant crisis under control, with the last number of legal efforts having so far fallen flat on their face.
According to the Wednesday report, the government now wants to clarify the legal status of migrants defined as unaccompanied children who land in Britain, with officials having decided to make Britain’s Home Office their corporate parents in the hopes of streamlining efforts to take care of the children.
Currently, many ostensibly child-aged migrants are being held in hotels while waiting for spaces in local authority-run children’s facilities to open up. Those awaiting the transfer are left in legal limbo under the current system, with it being ultimately unclear who is actually legally responsible for their wellbeing.
Such a matter is only made worse by the rate these supposed children go missing, with The Times reporting that one in ten migrants recorded as being unaccompanied children go missing at some point under the UK’s care.
Despite this atrocious record, an official from the Home Office has sworn that the safety of the alleged children is its “absolute priority”, and that “safeguarding and welfare measures” are in place in facilities where migrant children are being held despite the large number of minors that end up going missing.
Overall, The Times reports that Britain is expecting between 3,000 and 4,000 unaccompanied migrant children to land in England in small boats, with it so far being unclear how the government plans to house and look after them.
What is also unclear is how many migrants crossing the channel claiming to be children actually are, with there being multiple high-profile cases in the UK of migrants lying about their age to authorities.
For example, one Afghan migrant, Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, managed to gain access to the UK after claiming that he was a teenage boy, despite the fact that — in reality — he was already a full-grown man with two previous convictions for murder under his belt.
Abdulrahimzai went on to kill one more man in Britain, an aspiring British marine, stabbing the man to death on the street after getting into an argument with him over an e-scooter.
Before the killing, Abdulrahimzai is described as attending UK secondary school alongside actual children, and is even alleged to have asked out “14-year-old girls” while posing as a child himself.