The latest figures show that over 50 missing child asylum seekers remain unaccounted for after arriving in the UK as unaccompanied children and entering care systems in Kent, highlighting serious safeguarding failures. According to data obtained by The Guardian, at least 345 children went missing from facilities overseen by Kent County Council (KCC) between 2020 and August 2025 — including 56 who are still missing.
Many of the missing children reached the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats or hidden in lorries and are believed to have been taken by traffickers. Kent is frequently the point of arrival.
Rising numbers and key nationalities
Between 2021 and 2023, when the Home Office operated two hotels for unaccompanied children in Kent, 132 children disappeared from those two hotels. Of those, 108 were later found and 24 remain missing. Additionally, from 2020 to August 2025, 213 children went missing from KCC’s reception centres for this group, with 182 located and 32 still missing.
Among the children who vanished, Albanian nationals formed the largest group — 68 missing from the hotels and 65 from reception centres. Afghan and Iranian nationals were the next most-represented.
Safeguarding concerns and exploitation risks
Advocacy groups say each missing child represents a profound system failure. Migrant & Refugee Children’s Legal Unit lawyer Esme Madill said: “These figures are shocking. Behind each number is a frightened child who will already have experienced egregious human rights abuses.” Many are suspected of being trafficked into criminal exploitation: “These children should be playing football in the park and preparing for their GCSEs, not servicing trafficking gangs… chained to furniture, physically and sexually assaulted, punished by being starved of food.”
Research confirms accommodation in hotels increases vulnerability. A joint report by ECPAT UK and University College London found that placing unaccompanied children in Home Office-run hotels significantly heightened trafficking and exploitation risk.
Legal rulings and recent policy moves
In December 2023 a High Court ruled that the routine use of hotels to accommodate unaccompanied children was unlawful, stating such placements should be short emergency measures and not a substitute for local authority care. In response, KCC moved to expand reception centres rather than hotels — yet since that ruling another 44 children have gone missing from those centres, with 10 still missing and 34 found.
Why this matters and what must be done
Children who go missing find themselves at exponentially greater risk of criminal exploitation, forced labour, sexual abuse and human trafficking. Experts call for urgent action: better initial safeguarding, rapid intervention when children vanish, reinforced systems for tracking and protecting unaccompanied minors, and radical reform of how such children are housed. Authorities including KCC and the Home Office recognise the problem: a KCC spokesperson said that safeguarding protocols exist but that “it is challenging to prevent all children from going missing.” The Home Office emphasised that the welfare of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children remains a priority and that systems are under regular review.
