CNN —
Hundreds of child asylum seekers have been missing since the UK government started putting minors in hotels due to a strain on the country’s asylum accommodation system, British Immigration Secretary Robert Jenrick told lawmakers in Parliament on Tuesday, calling for an inquiry into the matter.
Jenrick said Tuesday that around 200 children have been missing since July 2021. “Of the 4,600 unaccompanied children placed in hotels since July 2021, 440 have gone missing and 200 children are still missing,” he said.
About 13 of the 200 missing children are under the age of 16, and one is female, according to the government. The majority of the missing, 88%, are Albanian nationals, the remaining 12% are from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.
Jenrick attributed the problem to an increase in migrant boat crossings through the English Channel to Britain, leaving the government “no alternative” but to use “specialist hotels” to house minors from July 2021.
Although the contracted use of hotels was intended as a temporary solution, four were still operational with over 200 rooms for child migrants, according to a report by the independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration as of October.
British charities and migrant rights groups have long lamented the poor conditions in the country’s overwhelmed and underfunded asylum system.
The number of asylum claims processed in the UK has plummeted in recent years, leaving people in limbo for months and years – trapped in processing facilities or makeshift hotels and unable to work – and fueling a stubborn debate over Britain’s borders.
The missing migrant children were first reported to British media on Saturday, when The Observer newspaper reported that “dozens” of asylum-seeking children were kidnapped by “gangs” from a British Home Office hotel in Brighton, southern England.
Since then, calls for an urgent investigation into the matter have increased, with the opposition Labor Party, the human rights organization Refugee Council and local authorities calling for urgent action.
The Home Office has dismissed these reports as untrue, and in a statement to CNN, a Home Office spokesman said: “The well-being of the children in our care is of the utmost priority.”
The spokesman added that they have “robust protective procedures” in place and “when a child goes missing, local authorities work closely with authorities, including the police, to urgently establish his whereabouts.”
While the UK government does not have powers to detain unaccompanied minors who are free to leave hotels, Jenrick defended the UK Home Office’s safeguarding practices, saying records are being kept and monitored of children leaving and returning to hotels, and that aid workers are on hand to accompany children off-site on activities and social outings.
“Many of the missing are subsequently tracked down and located,” Jenrick told Parliament.
Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper of the opposition Labor Party accused traffickers in her reply to Parliament, saying: “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappear and are not found. They are taken off the streets by human traffickers.”
Cooper said that “urgent and serious action” is needed to crack down on gangs and keep children and young people safe.
“We know from Greater Manchester Police that they have warned asylum hotels and children’s homes that are under attack by organized criminals. And in this case, there’s a pattern here that gangs know where to go to get the kids, often probably because they got them here in the first place,” she added. “There is a criminal network at play. The government is completely failing to stop them.”
On Monday, British charity Refugee Action said it was “scandalous that children who have come to this country to ask for safety are being put at risk. Ultimate responsibility rests with the Home Secretary and her decision to operate an asylum system based not on compassion but on hostility,” they added.
The UK charity Refugee Council tweeted that they are “deeply concerned by the practice of placing unaccompanied children in Home Office accommodation outside of legal requirements, putting them at risk of harm as over 200 of them are missing”.