Nearly one in four unaccompanied children have gone missing from a hotel used by the Home Office to house asylum seekers, with fears some could be exploited by criminal networks.
Of the 600 unaccompanied children who have passed through the hotel in Brighton in 18 months, 136 were reported missing.
Seventy-nine remain unaccounted for, The Observer reported. At another hotel in Hythe, Kent, about 10 per cent of asylum-seeking children were going missing each week, it was claimed.
A source who worked for Mitie, a Home Office contractor which provides security services at hotels, said: “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers.”
The source claimed that many were being
