A hotel run by the Home Office has become a hotspot for kidnapping of asylum seeking children
Kidnapping of asylum-seeking children from a Brighton hotel, run under the Home Office, has become rampant as patterns are noted to being repeated, an Observer investigation reveals.
A whistleblower, who works for Mitie, a Home Office contractor, came forward to reveal that children were being abducted off the street right outside the hotel.
"Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers," said the source.
Despite the Home Office being issued multiple warnings by police, stating that the vulnerable asylum-seeking children, who came to the UK without carers or parents, would be targeted by criminal networks, the kidnappings still continued.
As per the reports around 600 unaccompanied children have passed by the Sussex hotel over the past 18 months with 136 gone missing,
Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, described the revelations as "truly appalling and scandalous" and demanded that the government reveal information about the disappearances.
She added: "Suella Braverman [the home secretary] has failed to act on the repeated warnings she has been given about totally inadequate safeguards for children in their care.
"It is a total dereliction of duty for the Home Office to so badly fail to protect child safety or crack down on the dangerous gangs putting them in terrible risk. Ministers must urgently put new protection arrangements in place."