Half of unaccompanied child migrants reassessed by Kent County Council last year were found to be adults, according to figures obtained under Freedom of Information laws — raising serious concerns about the integrity of age verification processes for small boat arrivals.
Of 19 so-called child migrants placed in the care of Kent County Council who were retested in 2025 after frontline staff raised doubts about their true ages, ten were determined to be adults, The Sun can reveal. The individuals had been due to be placed in foster care or children’s homes as minors.
Kent is at the centre of the issue because the majority of small boat migrants arrive off the coast of Dover, giving the local authority a legal duty to care for any unaccompanied minors who arrive illegally. The council had 2,656 child migrants in its care in 2025.
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said the findings were deeply troubling. “It is completely wrong. This puts children already in foster or children’s homes in danger,” he said. “We have seen absurd cases where illegal immigrants, including a Sudanese man with a receding hairline and facial hair, pretend to be children when clearly adults. This will only get worse now Labour’s Borders Act has passed, which no longer allows illegal immigrants to be treated as over-18 if they refuse to take an age assessment test.”
The last point refers to a provision in the recently passed legislation that critics argue removes a key safeguard — previously, an individual who refused to undergo an age assessment could be treated as an adult by default. That option is no longer available under the new law.
The Home Office said in response: “The safety and wellbeing of children in care is paramount. We have robust processes to verify and assess an individual’s age. We will continue to modernise and strengthen that process in coming months by testing Facial Age Estimation technology.”
