We are distressed to learn that more than 50 lone child asylum seekers who disappeared in the care of Kent county council are still missing, three years after news first broke about kids going missing from the council’s care.
Many of the missing children arrived in small boats or hidden in the backs of lorries and are thought to have been taken by traffickers. Not enough is being done to find them and stop this repeating.
“Their mental and physical health is permanently harmed by the abuse they experience during this time […] These children should be playing football in the park and preparing for their GCSEs, not servicing trafficking gangs in conditions we know include being chained to furniture, physically and sexually assaulted, and punished by being starved of food” says MiCLU solicitor Esme Madill who works on the Breaking the Chains project.
Albanian children were the largest group to go missing, making up half the total from the Home Office hotels, 68, and more than a quarter from the reception centres, 65. The second and third largest nationalities to have gone missing from both places are Afghans followed by Iranians.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/01/more-than-50-child-asylum-seekers-still-missing-after-disappearing-from-kent-care
