'You do not speak, we know how old you are, we will put this as your real age'
Hundreds of children are 'not believed' at the border
Children spend 'months' alone in asylum hotels because border officials incorrectly identify them as adults, according to a new report.
The unaccompanied children seeking asylum in the UK are supposed to be sent to local authorities where they are looked after by children's services.
But hundreds of youths are 'not believed' and sent to asylum seeker accommodation for adults instead.
According to the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU), at least 296 children in the north west were wrongly identified as adults last year.
The organisation spoke to around a dozen children deemed to be adults when they first arrived in the UK, some on small boats across the Channel.
These children told the GMIAU that they were 'frightened and intimidated' during their initial encounters with border officials.
One said: "I told him my age, he put down I was 24. I said 'no I am not, this is not okay, this is not fair'.
"They said 'you do not speak, we know how old you are, we will put this as your real age'. They didn’t give me a chance to dispute my age there, they just put it was 2001.
"I stopped explaining because I felt that there was no point, I was too scared."
Most of the children the GMIAU spoke to were placed in hotels in Greater Manchester where they were treated like adults, according to the report.
Some children spent months in these hotels before they were referred to a local authority to get the support they were entitled to.
In the hotels, the children said they felt 'unsafe, lonely and isolated'. One child said: “Even when I was in the hotel, I was just trying to speak to someone, tell them this wasn’t the right place to be in, but no one listened to me.”
According to GMIAU, data from six local authorities in the North West shows that there were 532 such referrals from January 2024 to February 2025.
In 296 of these cases, social workers found them to be 'clear and obvious children'. The rest were either determined by the social workers to be adults or told they needed a further age assessment.
Around half of the children the GMIAU spoke to were told they would need a further age assessment by the National Age Assessment Board (NAAB) which is part of the Home Office.
Among the recommendations in the report, the GMIAU has called for the NAAB to be abolished, claiming that their assessments are causing 'serious harm' with some children experiencing suicidal thoughts as a 'direct result' of this process.
Speaking about the NAAB assessments, one child said: “They ask you questions which shouldn’t be asked to us as children, they force you to answer questions that don’t relate to the age assessment at all.
"It’s like an interrogation process by police. They switch you between three persons."
The GMIAU report also calls on the Home Office to acknowledge the 'harms' caused by its current practices, immediately suspend 'significantly over 18 decisions' pending an investigation, abolish the NAAB and end the outsourcing of asylum accommodation.
The children in the report have now written to the Home Secretary asking her to 'acknowledge what we have been through' and change the system.
Rivka Shaw, Communications Manager and Policy Officer at GMIAU, said: "The children whose stories feature in our report are children like any others. They fled war and violence and took huge risks to arrive in the UK in the hope of being safe here.
"I think most of us would share the hope that these children would be met with welcome, as we would hope for our own children.
"The reality of how they have been treated is shocking: mocked and intimidated by border officials who accuse them of lying; packed off to asylum hotels for adults where they are scared; surrounded by adults they couldn’t communicate with and who are struggling themselves.
"We’re not just talking about children being at risk of harm. We’re talking about significant harm already being done to significant numbers of children – at least 296 in our region, the North West, in a period of just over a year.
"The Home Office knows this is happening. It is a direct result of their policies at the border. That’s why we, and the children who have been impacted, are calling on them to act."
A Home Office spokesperson said: "We have robust processes in place to verify and assess an individual’s age.
"Where there is doubt and where there is no documentary evidence, immigration officers are required to make an initial age decision to determine whether the individual should be treated as an adult or a child.
"Where necessary, age assessments can then be conducted by the local authorities or the National Age Assessment Board."