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Britain's Home Office is being threatened with legal action over concerns child asylum seekers may be sent to Rwanda, Africa, because officials may have mistakenly identified them as adults.
Britain's Observer newspaper writes that British ministers are looking forward to seeing planes depart as soon as possible amid a record 181 crossings detected in the English Channel so far this year.
The department has anticipated a flurry of legal complaints to be filed as a result of the promise to deport some asylum seekers to the East African country.
It is now understood that they are running into difficulties dealing with those who say they are children but are labeled as adults by immigration officials after an initial assessment based on their physical appearance and behaviour. Under the rules of the deportation plan, ministers had promised that no children would be deported to Rwanda when flights began this summer.
Britain's Home Office is accused of an illegal approach because it is proposing to deport people based only on an "initial cursory judgment of age" by an official.
An organization with years of experience in the matter has now issued an action letter, a precursor to legal action, stating that reliance on such a thin estimate is "totally incompatible" with the government's stated intention not to involve children in deportation. her from Rwanda.
The department has been given two weeks to respond to the legal threat before further action is taken by the charity. It comes as warnings from several organizations say they have witnessed deeply troubling mental health issues among children they believe may be in this position.
"For years this government has forcibly placed thousands of unaccompanied children at risk, placing them in adult shelters, camps and adult prisons as a result of its flawed port of entry age policy , ” said Maddie Harris, director of Humans.
"These children now face an extreme and additional threat: forced displacement to Rwanda. We have launched this legal action to ensure that no unaccompanied child is sent to Rwanda, a risk that the children we work with are terrified could become their reality. "Since the passage of the Rwanda Act, we have witnessed an increase in suicidal ideation among our clients and unprecedented levels of fear among these children ," she adds.
Repeated concerns have been raised about how accurate age estimates have been when dealing with immigration cases.
Last year, Children's Commissioner for England Dame Rachel de Souza said she had serious concerns about the process and that it should be carried out in "a safe and robust way. She said most of those claiming to be children and the age of which it is contested that "in fact, they are shown to be children in the further assessment".
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