Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
JIan was just 16 years old when he was abandoned outside the front door of UK Visas and Immigration’s headquarters in Croydon, London – alone, scared and without any documents to prove who he was. He had arrived in Britain just hours earlier – his first trip outside his home country in Central Africa and the first time he had traveled outside his home town.
The last few days were like a nightmare, in which he witnessed a horrific attack on his family. He himself was a victim of torture and with no one else to turn to, he managed to get help from a trusted friend of the family.
She brought him to the UK by plane, and Jean briefly thought he might find safety with her, until he was taken to Lunar House in Croydon and told he was now on his own.
“She said ‘I can’t support you anymore’. I just remember her saying ‘Go into the building and tell them who you are.’ Independent.
“I felt confused and scared. The weather, the language… everything was new to me. I was just lost. Initially I was scared to see people in uniform because it reminded me of what I had seen at home. I was in shock from what I had experienced.”
thousands unaccompanied asylum-seeking children Most of the children who seek help from UK authorities each year are aged 16 or 17. In the year ending March 2025, there were 3,707 asylum claims from unaccompanied children.
For people aged 17 and under, social services should provide a safe place to live, as well as clothing, food, education and assistance with asylum claims.
However Hundreds of children are misdiagnosed by Home Office officials as adults, which means they don’t get the help they’re entitled to Often put into dangerous situations.
Data obtained by the Helen Bamber Foundation revealed that at least 678 children were misclassified as adults in 2024 following human “visual assessment” at the border.
David Bolt, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, found that factors such as “lack of eye contract” were used to make decisions, and said that children were being “pressured” to declare that they were over 18. The inspectorate looked at a sample of 55 cases where the Home Office said the asylum seeker was “over the age of 18”, finding 76 per cent were actually children.
Ministers now plan to substitute human judgment aye facial recognition technologyIn a move that the charity and rights group said This is equivalent to “experimenting on immigrants” This would lead to “serious, life-changing, consequences”.
The Home Office is in the market for “an algorithm that can accurately estimate a subject’s age”. A government contract notice, viewed by Independent, says the technology “will have a number of use cases for the Home Office, one example would be helping determine the age of people who are encountered without verifiable identity documentation”.
The three-year contract, which starts in February next year, is worth £1.3 million. Announcing the plans in July, the then Home Office minister Dame Angela Eagle said that AI facial age estimation technology would be “the most cost-effective option”.
The aim is to “fully integrate facial age assessment into the current age assessment system during 2026”, he said.
It is not yet clear at which stage of the asylum process the AI age-estimating technology will be used; Will it be deployed on children coming to the UK on small boats or will it be used to inform final asylum claim decisions. The Home Office has said the technology will be used to assist officers, and no final decision has been made about at what stage of the process it will be integrated.
If used on arrival, the algorithm would have to account for the aging effect of traumatic journeys, past torture and ill-treatment – experiences that can often make young asylum seekers appear older.
When Jean arrived in Britain in 2012, she initially received help from social services and was placed in the care of other children. However Home Office officials later decided he was not a child and his support was taken away.
The decision was disastrous. He said, “I was called for an interview at 4 pm. They gave me a time when the offices were about to be closed, this is my understanding now, but I did not release it at that time.”
“I had to wait for him to greet me at 5 pm. He said, ‘You are not a child, saying that you are a liar.’ I told him, ‘I’m not a liar, I know who I am, I know my age.’
“You feel like you have to isolate yourself to deal with what you’re going through, constantly questioning: why, why, why? You feel like you want to end everything because they don’t believe in you, and I’m sure a lot of young people are in the same situation.”
He said immigration officials told him he would have to go to a charity’s office, refugee Council, and he must find his own way there: “They gave me a map, and it was a long journey to get there, especially as I struggled with the language. I managed to get there but it was about to be closed, and I was sent to a hostel to sleep”.
Now a 17-year-old boy with little English, he was placed in a hostel with adult asylum seekers. He felt incredibly insecure and thought leaving her would be a good decision, which he later saw as a mistake.
“I was shocked, worried and I just wanted to be alone. That was the idea,” he said. He then had to sleep rough in London for almost four years – until a stranger saw him asking for money at the train station, taking him to Notre Dame Charity in Leicester Square.
They received a referral to the migrant charity Freedom from Torture, who were able to assist Jean in submitting a new asylum claim. A judge’s decision to grant her sanctuary in 2018, and recognition that she should have been helped as a child refugee so many years ago, means Jean now has a roof over her head in council-provided accommodation.
On the day of our interview, he heard that he was now a British citizen. However he fears for others like him who came to Britain as children but who are told they are liars.
Speaking about the government’s plan to use AI to help make decisions, he said: “It’s a way of not treating people as humans. They’re treating us as a tool to train their AI.”
“They’re doing some testing and it’s like we’re not human. They’re thinking ‘Okay let’s use them.’
“Making decisions based on computers, we all know that’s not always accurate. They need to understand that a lot of young people are going through trauma, and they may look different at a time when they really need help.”
Kamena Dorling, policy director at the Helen Bamber Foundation, said the government’s plans are “worrying unless significant safeguards are put in place”.
He added: “Existing evidence has shown that AI may be less accurate and more biased than human decision-making when estimating a person’s age, with similar patterns of errors.
“Importantly, AI cannot account for factors that can significantly alter a young person’s appearance after fleeing conflict and persecution and making dangerous journeys, such as trauma, malnutrition and exhaustion.”
Anna Bacciarelli, senior AI researcher at Human Rights Watch, said: “The UK government’s plan to use facial age estimation is wrong, and should be immediately canceled.
“In addition to subjecting vulnerable children and youth to an inhumane process that could undermine their privacy, non-discrimination, and other human rights, we don’t really know whether the technology works. There is no standardized industry benchmark, and no ethical way to train and audit this technology on similar populations.
“In the UK, it has so far been used in shops and bars, not refugee processing centres”.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Strong age assessment is a vital tool in maintaining border security.
“We will begin to modernize that process through testing of fast and effective AI age estimation technology in the coming months. We then intend to integrate facial age estimation into the current system, subject to the results of testing and assurance.”