A Brighton hotel from where more than 130 migrant children went missing will be reopened by the Home Office, according to reports.
Several hotels were closed to unaccompanied children after it was revealed more than 440 young people had gone missing across the UK, with many of them believed to have been abducted by criminal gangs.
More than 150 of them have not yet been found.
But one hotel in Brighton, from which at least 136 children disappeared, plans to reopen as soon as Tuesday, according to The Guardian, citing leaked internal memos.
“Good news. We will be operational by the 27th June. We can let you know numbers closer to the time once the youngsters start arriving,” said a message from a senior asylum official.
It is feared some of those who went missing have been trafficked. Others were found in Scotland.
Police officers found 12 children from Brighton working on cannabis farms. One had allegedly been forced into slavery.
Staff at the hotel in question had been accused of threatening and racially abusing migrant children staying there, according to earlier reports.
The council has warned the Home Office it will take legal action if it attempts to place children in the hotel again.
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The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
Since July 2021, 4,600 child migrants have been placed in hotels.
The Home Office was using six hotels in the UK to house unaccompanied children who have been rescued from small boats in the English Channel.
An investigation by The National found more than 200 children – some as young as 11 – had gone missing from one Brighton hotel alone. Police said in March that 76 were still unaccounted for.
The majority of the children placed in the hotel were 16 and 17-year-old boys – but 13 of the missing were under 16.
Almost 90 per cent of the children are Albanians, with the remainder from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Vietnam, Pakistan and Turkey.
People-trafficking gangs have been using mobile phone trackers to find refugee children staying in UK hotels and lure them away to work for them, The National revealed.
Refugee protection charity Stand For All told The National that criminal gangs are taking children and trafficking them across the UK.
Officials in Manchester reported finding children in the area acting as spotters for counterfeiting and drug gangs.
