Home Office treatment of children 'a gift for traffickers' as experts slam 'casual racism'

Former Independent Commissioners Dame Sara Thornton and Dame Vera Baird accuse the government of blaming victims as hundreds of children disappear from hotels housing claimants 'asylum

Two former Commissioners expressed alarm at the treatment reserved for migrant children (

Image: PA)

The Home Office's treatment of migrant children is a 'free gift for traffickers' - while its approach to missing children shows 'casual racism', two former commissioners warn in a scathing intervention.< /p>

Dame Sara Thornton and Dame Vera Baird accuse government of blaming victims as hundreds of children disappear from hotels housing asylum seekers.

In a powerful joint letter, they asked where the outrage was over suggestions that the children didn't matter because they entered the country illegally.

Dame Sara, the government's former anti-slavery commissioner, and former victims commissioner Dame Vera have warned that unaccompanied minors could be easy targets for sex traffickers.

The government has stated that approximately 200 child asylum seekers are currently missing, the majority of them young boys from Albania.

The former commissioners said many of them are likely victims of child trafficking, saying, "It's casual racism to assume that these young victims are blameworthy because they were born male and are Albanian."

The Home Office has been criticized for housing unaccompanied children in hotels (

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Getty Images)

, Dame Sara and Dame Vera described the policy of lodging children alone in hotels as "a freebie for traffickers", and added that child protection should apply to everyone, regardless of either their origin.

They said: "We are concerned that the frequent political attacks on the credibility of victims of slavery and trafficking and the alleged abuse of the protections of modern slavery have created the conditions in which we fail to to protect children who are at high risk of becoming victims of crime."

They asked if the UK is 'so indifferent' to the plight of migrants that we accept the disappearance of 200 children.

The duo said the government's stance that children are lured to dangerous Channel crossings "perfectly describes child trafficking".

They continued, "Children in the hands of traffickers are often...