Over the past decade the British government has registered over 50 illegal migrants over the age of 30 as children, according to a Freedom of Information request.
In an embarrassing revelation, Home Office figures show that border officials were either so inept or indifferent as to register 52 grown adults over the age of 30 years old as children over the last decade.
The Freedom of Information request from the Daily Telegraph also revealed that 2021 saw the highest number of alleged asylum seekers claiming to be children, a status which increases the odds of the government granting an asylum request. According to the figures, 1,500 people identified as adult migrants claimed that they were children last year, compared to 364 in the year prior.
Many more may have slipped through the system unrecorded due to inadequate vetting.
Between 2012 and 2020, an average of 355 illegals claimed to be minors but were exposed as adults by age tests per year.
The massive upswing in 2021 correlates with the record number of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel — 28,526 arrived last year, compared to 8,466 in 2020.
2022 is on pace to see at least 60,000 land, though some estimates suggest that as many as 100,000 illegals could reach British shores.
Commenting on the failure of the government to discern the true age of many migrants, Alp Mehmet, the chairman of the Migration Watch think tank, said: “These are astonishing figures that reveal a seriously worrying situation. There is absolutely no excuse for placing people much nearer middle-age than childhood among vulnerable minors.
“No individual, where doubts about age exist, should be allowed anywhere near vulnerable youngsters, in any setting. The safety of our children has to be paramount.”
The problem of asylum seekers posing as children has been a longstanding issue in Britain, with a particularly egregious example coming in 2016 when photos emerged of a man estimated to be 38 years old was imported from Calais as part of a scheme to receive child migrants from France.
At the time, pro-migration activists attempted to claim that he was not brought over on the basis that he was a child and that he was actually working as a language interpreter for other migrants, but this turned out to be false.
Another notable instance came in 2020 when parents were forced to object after a child migrant who “looked 40” joined a school in Coventry, England.
“He’s got a receding hairline for God’s sake,” one parent exclaimed.
Earlier this year, Home Secretary Priti Patel vowed to toughen up checks on migrant arrivals to prevent fraudulent claims of being children. This will supposedly include X-ray exams to determine the age of migrants by scanning their bones, as is done in the United States and in some European Union countries, but which the British authorities have resisted for years.
The state of border control was criticised as “inexcusably awful” and a threat to national security last month by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Neal, in a report that revealed that border officials are consistently failing to log biometric data such as fingerprints and even names for newly arrived boat migrants
The report went on to say that the age of migrants was being determined by officials simply holding up a piece of cardboard with the numbers 1 to 63 written on it and asking migrants to point to their age.