UK-run French holding centres detained lone children 284 times in 2025

UK-run short-term detention sites in northern France held unaccompanied children 284 times in 2025, according to data obtained by the Guardian via freedom of information requests. The facilities—near Calais and Dunkirk—are designed to hold people for no longer than 24 hours, but inspectors raised safeguarding concerns after authorities could not locate referrals for two vulnerable child detainees who were later re-trafficked, the Guardian reports.

The figures sit outside the UK’s regular immigration statistics: the Guardian notes that data on who is held by the UK in France is not published as part of official reporting. Over four years, the newspaper found about 900 instances of unaccompanied minors being detained at British short-term facilities near Calais and Dunkirk. The annual pattern is uneven—284 cases in 2025, 258 in 2024, 87 in 2023, and 253 in 2022—while overall detentions at the sites fell to 7,454 in 2025 from 9,736 in 2024. That combination—fewer total detentions but more recorded child cases than in 2023—points to a system whose headline metric can improve even as the most politically sensitive category becomes more common.

Inspectors’ casework shows what the statistics obscure. One child was a 14-year-old girl found zipped inside a holdall in a car, the Guardian reports; another was a 16-year-old boy with a history of trafficking and abuse. Both were detained and then handed to French border police, but were later found in the UK after being re-trafficked. In the girl’s case, the Guardian reports she was taken clandestinely to the UK and held in a warehouse with other women before escaping, fearing she would be forced into prostitution.

Charities and monitoring groups describe the sites as legal and procedural grey zones, and the Guardian reports that the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, said it was worrying that Border Force could not locate safeguarding referrals for vulnerable detainees. The political direction of travel appears to be toward more capacity: Jonathan Ellis of the Detention Forum told the Guardian that government plans to develop detention estates in France make accountability and established procedures urgent.

The facilities are meant to hold people for a day. The Guardian’s reporting describes consequences that can last much longer.