THE Government has been severely criticised by its own watchdog for allowing children to be “snatched” from their homes by immigration officials.

Al Aynsley-Green, England’s first Children’s Commissioner, said that it was outrageous in a civilised society that the children of asylum-seekers were being rounded up for deportation with no warning and no attempt to explain to them what was happening.

The children were then taken with their families to immigration detention centres and held under lock and key to await deportation. Such experiences, he said, were extremely traumatic for the children, who were left bewildered and distraught. Many of the children regarded themselves as English and could not understand why they were being treated like criminals, he added.

Professor Aynsley-Green, a highly respected paediatrician and the former children’s health adviser for the NHS, has spoken to a number of children of asylum-seekers since his appointment last year.

“Each of these conversations has shocked me,” he said. “Society is very concerned about the safety and protection of children. Yet here is the State snatching children for purposes of deportation. It is outrageous in a civilised society. The children are taken away from their homes without understanding what is going to happen to them. To the children, it feels like they are being snatched.”

Professor Aynsley-Green’s comments come after his highly critical report last month on the Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre in Bedfordshire, where families are sent when their applications for asylum are refused.

Although the Government claims that the parents of such families are told what is going to happen, very often this message did not get through to the children and too often the authorities treated the children merely as appendages of their parents, he said.

Professor Aynsley-Green emphasised that he was not trying to interfere with the politics of immigration, but rather trying to ensure that children caught up in the asylum process were treated as individuals. “I’m not dissenting from the important point that countries have a right to say who stays and who goes. But I am asking for human dignity and the needs of children to be considered during the whole process,” he said. He added that the treatment of asylum-seeking children was at odds with the goals of the Government’s highly regarded Every Child Matters legislation. Professor Aynsley-Green said his concerns were shared by the Children’s Commissioners for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. All four have had a meeting with the Home Office officials responsible for immigration to call for the end to such detentions.

They are also calling for the scrapping of Section 9 of the 2004 Immigration Act, which means that families with children can be deprived of housing and basic support if their initial claim is refused. It is understood that the Government isconsidering alternatives to this section.

Tony McNulty, the Home Office Minister, said that asylum-seeking families with children whose claims had been refused were detained only as a measure of last resort if they chose not to leave the UK voluntarily.

“The scheme is not designed to make (failed asylum-seeking) families destitute or to split them up but to incentivise voluntary return before removal is enforced,” he said.

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