Eight children under 10 and seven aged 10 made the journey from France to England unaccompanied this year, according to social care records from Kent County Council seen by The i Paper.
The figures were described as “disturbing”, with charities warning the children faced protracted trauma after the treacherous journey.
At least three people died attempting to reach the UK in small boats on Sunday, in the latest fatal incident in the Channel.
According to the UN, 2024 was the deadliest year yet in the Channel. Crossings have continued over the Christmas period, with Government figures showing at least 1,163 people arrived in the UK via small boat in the last week.
In total, 2,595 children made the journey unaccompanied from January to the end of November. Nearly half were 16-year-olds.
All except 30 were at least temporarily taken in the care of Kent County Council.
More Sudanese children crossed the Channel than any other nationality.
Sudanese people are now one of the biggest nationality groups waiting in the camps of Calais, with women and children among those living in makeshift shelters in the woodland.
Ninety-nine per cent of Sudanese asylum seekers are granted protection in the UK after the Home Office assesses their claim.
Why are people crossing the Channel?
Last year, 99 per cent of people who arrived on small boats made a claim for asylum, meaning they requested refuge in the UK on the grounds of persecution or threat in their own country.
To claim asylum in the UK, a person must be physically in the UK. There is no visa to travel to the UK to make an asylum claim.
According to Oxford’s Migration Observatory, this means that people who do not have another form of visa – or are from the 67 countries which need visas to get to the UK – do not have a legal route to seek asylum in the UK.
Those who do not have access to a passport, either because they never had one or because it was lost or abandoned during the rush to flee their home, also cannot travel to the UK safely to seek asylum, the Observatory said.
The UK does have some routes for other kinds of refugee resettlement in the UK. Most are nationality specific – for Afghans, Ukrainians and Hong Kongers – while some are run by the UN, but people cannot apply for these.
Labour has said it wants to stop the “dangerous” small boat crossings and is focusing on tackling the people smuggling gangs who facilitate them.
It has pledged a further £58m in funding to the National Crime Agency to crack down on smuggling networks and ramped up voluntary and enforced returns of those without a legal right to remain in the UK.
This year, it launched a new Border Security Command to bolster efforts investigate, arrest, and prosecute people smugglers.
The number of Afghans arriving in the UK soared after the Taliban seized power in the country in August 2021, and Afghans were the top nationality arriving by small boat in 2023.
Iranian children were the third largest nationality group, followed by Syrians and Eritreans.
“We know that the smugglers exploit people instead of payment for these crossings, and these children are particularly vulnerable to that given their age and lack of financial resources.”
“I’ve sat with young people after they’ve arrived and even by looking at them you can tell how disorientating and traumatic that experience has been.
He added: “We could address this if we allowed children who have to make these difficult and dangerous journeys alone to be united with their family members with a visa. We need to be looking at family reunion rules; something like the Dubs amendment [which allowed a number of unaccompanied child refugees to reunite with family members in the UK each year under a pre-Brexit arrangement] is one of the options.
The i Paper understands the Government is not planning to create a new relocation scheme from Europe for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children at this time.
There were 7,380 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children representing around 9 per cent of all looked after children in England alone, according to Home Office statistics in the year ending 31 March 2024.
Minister for Border Security and Asylum Angela Eagle said: “We all want to end dangerous small boat crossings, which threaten lives and undermine our border security.
“We already offer a number of safe and legal routes for the most vulnerable people and our priority is to make sure these are being used appropriately.”
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