LONDON — Britain’s government acted unlawfully when it routinely housed newly arrived unaccompanied child asylum seekers in hotels, the High Court ruled on Thursday.
A child protection charity brought legal action against Britain’s Home Office and local authorities in Kent, on England’s southern coast, over their treatment of unaccompanied migrant children, saying the temporary housing arrangements deny the youngsters the statutory child protection safeguards to which they are entitled.
Justice Martin Chamberlain ruled that authorities breached legal duties of care owed to all children who require looking after, irrespective of their immigration status.
“Ensuring the safety and welfare of children with no adult to look after them is among the most fundamental duties of any civilized state,” the judge said.
Every Child Protected Against Trafficking, the charity that brought the lawsuit, said hundreds of children who arrived alone had gone missing, with many potentially trafficked for criminal exploitation, as a result of the failures by government.
The judge said Home Office officials had been accommodating minors in hotels for over two years.
Placing asylum-seeking children in hotels for “very short periods in true emergency situations” was acceptable, he said, but “it cannot be used systematically or routinely in circumstances where it is intended, or functions in practice, as a substitute for local authority care.”
The Home Office and Department for Education had opposed the legal challenges, saying the hotel use was “a matter of necessity” and that officials have had no option “due to the unsustainable rise in illegal Channel crossings.”
The government said after Thursday’s ruling that it will work to ensure child migrants are provided with “suitable local authority placements.”
“It remains a child protection scandal that so many of the most vulnerable children remain missing at risk of significant harm as a consequence of these unlawful…
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