Asylum seekers who say they are children must be given ‘the benefit of the doubt’ by border guards, judges warn

ASYLUM-seekers who say they are children must be given the benefit of the doubt by border guards, judges have ordered.

In a blow to attempts to detect bogus child refugees and detain illegal immigrants, the Home Office has been told to scrap its current rules.

The Court of Appeal said that deciding someone’s age just on their looks is “unreliable” and risks “children being unlawfully detained”.

It comes after a series of scandals involving adult migrants posing as teenagers in order to get better treatment in the UK like foster care instead of being locked up and returned to their home countries.

Last year school pupils exposed Siavash Shah who was posing as a 15-year-old at a Suffolk school when he was really in his 30s.

At the height of the Calais crisis, there were calls for all new arrivals to face dental checks that could prove their real age, while reports have suggested that claimants were found to be adults in as many as two-thirds of disputed cases.

The latest case was brought by an Eritrean, known only as BF, who arrived in the UK in the back of a lorry five years ago.

'MARGIN OF ERROR'

He turned up in Tunbridge Wells and told police he was 16 but was detained for nine months because immigration officers believed he was “an adult in his mid-twenties”.

Social workers later assessed him and decided he was indeed a teenager, and his lawyers then challenged the Home Office guidance that allowed asylum-seekers to be deemed children if “their physical appearance/demeanour very strongly suggests that they are significantly over 18 years of age”.

In a judgement published yesterday, top judges ruled two-to-one that the policy was unlawful.

Lord Justice Underhill said: “In the absence of guidance as to the width of the margin of error there is inevitably a real risk that immigration officers will place too much trust in their own assessment that a particular young person is ‘significantly’ over 18.”

He said the new rules should give a range of ages for border guards to consider when deciding if a migrant is an adult or not, and pointed out that previous guidance said anyone who looked under 30 should be treated as possibly a child.

Rebecca Hilsenrath, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission which intervened in the case, said: “Children’s rights and welfare should not be a guessing game.

"Rough estimates based on physical appearance and behaviour without adequate guidance and training have left vulnerable children unlawfully detained in adult detention centres.”

The Home Office said: “We are disappointed by the judgement and are considering its implications carefully.”

The ruling comes ahead of new figures today on the level of immigration in the UK.

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