Hundreds of migrant children have been put at “significant risk” in hotels or detention centres after they were wrongly assessed to be adults by the Home Office, a damning new report has found.
At least 755 children were wrongly placed in adult accommodation or detention last year after officials concluded they were adults during visual assessments at the border, data reported by the Helen Bamber Foundation shows.
Freedom of information data sourced from 85 local authorities in England and Scotland shows that in 2025, there were 1,504 referrals to councils’ children’s services departments in relation to young people who had been sent to Home Office adult accommodation but were claiming to be children.
Of the 1,454 people who were subject to an age evaluation, 52 per cent were found to be children, said the human rights charity, which has been tracking the issue for the past four years. But it warned that the actual number was likely to be significantly higher, as not all councils had shared the relevant data.
On Thursday, the government published for the first time data showing how many migrants had been age-assessed, and what the outcomes of these evaluations were.
It revealed that in the year to March 2026, 6,420 people were subject to an initial age-assessment – equivalent to 7 per cent of asylum claimants. Some 43 per cent of migrants whose age was evaluated, either by Home Office officials or by council workers, were found to be adults, with the remaining 57 per cent found to be children.
Between July and December 2025, 326 migrant children were designated as adults before the decision was overturned, the data found. A further 377 people are still waiting for a decision about their age.
Kamena Dorling, director of policy at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said it was a “huge step forward” that the Home Office had published this data for the first time.
She added: “Despite the mounting evidence of the profound harm being caused, the Home Office continues its practice of wrongly assessing children – who come to the UK alone to seek protection – as adults.
“These are children who end up placed with strangers in adult accommodation, in immigration detention, and even in adult prisons. Change is urgently needed to prevent many more children from being harmed. The Home Office must acknowledge this as a serious safeguarding failure.”
More than 70 children whose age was disputed by the Home Office have been detained for removal to France under the government’s “one in, one out” scheme, according to data gathered by charity Humans for Rights Network.
Twenty-six of the 76 age-disputed asylum seekers have since been released and are in the care of children’s social services, according to a report in The Guardian.
The Independent revealed in March that a child, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had been charged with endangering the lives of migrants in a Channel crossing under a controversial new law.
Despite their having been assessed to be under the age of 18, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) argued that the prosecution was in the public interest due to the “seriousness of the offence”.
At a hearing at Canterbury Crown Court, Judge James, the honorary recorder for Canterbury, asked the prosecution to explain why the CPS was pursuing the case given that the only available sentence would be a referral order, which requires a young person to meet with a panel of people who support rehabilitation.
The former independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, David Bolt, found that Home Office officials were using factors such as “lack of eye contact” to make age decisions, and said he had heard evidence from lawyers and charities that children were being “pressured” into declaring they were over 18.
Ministers now plan to replace human judgement with AI facial-recognition technology, in a move that charities and rights groups have said amounts to an “experiment on migrants” that will lead to “serious, life-changing consequences”.
The aim is for facial age estimation to be “fully integrated into the current age assessment system over the course of 2026”, according to the Home Office.
It is not yet clear whether the AI age-estimation technology will be used on children as they arrive in the UK on small boats, or to inform final asylum claim decisions. The Home Office has said the technology will be used to assist officials, and that it has not yet been decided into what stage of the process it will be integrated.
A Home Office spokesperson said:“Robust age assessments are a vital tool in maintaining border security, which is why we are modernising this process by testing fast and effective AI age-estimation technology.
“Where uncertainty on age remains, an individual will be treated as a child. The local authority will then make a thorough assessment using well-established age-assessment techniques.”
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