Home Office admits 6,000 failed asylum seekers are missing in UK
Nearly 6,000 asylum seekers have gone missing after having their applications withdrawn, the Home Office has admitted.
In a letter to the Commons home affairs committee, ministers Michael Tomlinson and Tom Pursglove said there were 5,598 rejected asylum seekers still in the UK and that the Home Office was “taking steps to urgently re-establish contact with them”.
They are among 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been withdrawn in the 12 months to September last year after they failed to attend appointments or respond to letters from the Home Office.
The number of withdrawn cases has quadrupled on the previous year, from 4,260. The surge has led to claims that they are being wiped off the list without being fully assessed to help meet Rishi Sunak’s target of clearing the “legacy” backlog of asylum cases older than June 2022 by the end of 2023.
Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said: “This is a staggering admission that the Home Office has lost almost 6,000 asylum seekers and has no idea where they are.
“The fact that thousands of people have been allowed to effectively disappear into the underground economy or left vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs is yet more evidence of the shocking mismanagement and chaos in the asylum system.”
The admission comes after Sir Matthew Rycroft and Simon Ridley, the two most senior mandarins in the Home Office, suggested they did not know where the 17,000 withdrawn asylum seekers were when they appeared before the committee late last year.
In their letter, Mr Tomlinson and Mr Pursglove said this was “erroneous” and provided a breakdown of the 17,000, saying that 18 per cent, or 3,144 people, had left the UK, and some 15 per cent, or 2,643, had been granted some form of “lawful immigration status” after being initially rejected.
The asylum applications of a further 35 per cent, or 5,931 people, were still being actively investigated but, they admitted that 32 per cent of the total – 5,598 people – were missing.
The ministers said the migrants could not legally work or access public or private services, adding: “The Home Office has a dedicated tracing capability that works with the police, other government agencies and commercial companies to trace absconders.
“Where we obtain up to date contact details for a person from our tracing checks, we will then consider the most appropriate intervention, including whether to task an enforcement team to go and arrest them.
“Many individuals who are out of contact may voluntarily re-engage with the department or decide to leave the UK, others may come to light as a result of an encounter with the police, or during other enforcement activity such as an illegal working raid.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “Withdrawing asylum claims is not new and can occur for a number of reasons. At each step of the asylum process, individuals are warned about the importance of complying with the asylum process and that their asylum claim may be withdrawn should they fail to do so.
“If someone’s claim is withdrawn and they have no other right to be in UK, they will face removal from the UK and cannot work, rent or access public services. A dedicated team, who work with police and other partners, is also in place to help trace and locate absconders.”
Home Office reprimanded by statistics watchdog
The disclosures came as the Home Office was reprimanded by the statistics watchdog after the Government was accused of lying about clearing the legacy backlog of asylum cases.
Sir Robert Chote, the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, warned that the “episode may affect public trust” and said it was “not surprising” that the Government’s claim had been greeted with “some scepticism” and that some people felt misled.
Mr Sunak claimed to have cleared the backlog of 92,000 people who had claimed asylum before July last year but were still awaiting an initial decision.
However, this excluded 4,500 “complex” cases that were still outstanding because of criminal proceedings, or other hearings.
