The Home Office loses at least 21,000 asylum seekers in five years - and the ... trends now
More than 20,000 asylum seekers have gone missing in Britain over the past five years, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Figures obtained from the Home Office show that officials have been unable to locate at least 21,107 foreign nationals who claimed to be refugees.
The vast majority of those who have disappeared have no right to remain in the UK because their claims have been refused or withdrawn – and the true figure will be far higher as the data covers only the five years up to September 2023.
One senior Tory MP said last night that the details – obtained by the Mail using the Freedom of Information Act – showed that the asylum system needed a 'total reboot'.
It comes a week after the Government finally began detaining migrants who have no right to be in the UK for removal to Rwanda.
Figures obtained from the Home Office show that officials have been unable to locate at least 21,107 foreign nationals who claimed to be refugees
More than 200,000 migrants have gone missing in Britain over the past five years. Pictured: Migrants arrive into Dover with Border Force officials on Monday
The Home Office's programme saw an undisclosed number held in detention centres ahead of the first flights, which Rishi Sunak has said will begin eight to ten weeks from now.
The Home Office figures showed that 21,107 asylum cases were logged on a special database – known as 'service to file' – because officials did not know where they were and had no way of contacting them.
Guidance for staff states that 'service to file' is used only 'where a claimant's whereabouts or place of abode is unknown' and 'every possible effort' has been made to contact them.
The document adds: 'Service to file is the last resort and you must not consider it unless reasonable efforts have been made to serve the asylum decision to the claimant or their representative.'
Speaking anonymously, a civil servant familiar with the process said that migrants can be lost if they move to a new address or change lawyers without telling the Home Office.
'If they knew where the applicant was, or could track them, they would not have served the decision to file,' the source said.
'A decision can only be served to file when an applicant doesn't have an address on record, or that address is no longer valid, and when they have no legal representative.
'In practical terms, it means they don't know how to find the applicant. They serve it to file only after checking
