Andrew Bridgen
Main Page: Andrew Bridgen (Independent - North West Leicestershire)Department Debates - View all Andrew Bridgen's debates with the Home Office
Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children
Andrew Bridgen Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Robert Jenrick
These young people are not being put at risk primarily by the Home Office; they are being put at risk by dangerous people smugglers and criminals—those who smuggle them into the country and those who might exploit them when they are here. Our efforts are focused on protecting the young people in the hotels, as I described earlier, and we are also doing everything we can to fight the people smugglers, whether upstream or here in the United Kingdom, through working with the National Crime Agency and the security services and police forces.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Ind)
Does my right hon. Friend concede that unaccompanied minors in our asylum seeker system are being targeted by criminal gangs and does he agree that we need more resources to tackle the organised criminals who are causing this problem, in order to resolve it?
Robert Jenrick
It is wrong to generalise about where all the missing young people go. Some leave hotels to meet up with familial contacts, but my hon. Friend is right to say that others are drawn into criminality at the behest of people smugglers and trafficking gangs. We are working with the NCA, with police forces and with immigration enforcement to bear down on those gangs. One element of that is the work we are now doing to significantly increase the amount of immigration enforcement activity occurring in the UK, including raids on illegal employers such as construction sites, car washes and care homes, so that we can find the illegal employers, issue them with penalties and deter them from taking this kind of activity.