A senior UK judge has called into question the quality of Home Office assessment tests carried out to determine the correct age of small boat immigrants.
In a ruling made at the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber this month, Judge Owens said he was “unimpressed” by the standard of the tests and could bear “little weight” on information provided by assessors in court.
He made the comments during a judicial review involving an underage Afghan national, who arrived in the UK after crossing the Channel via small boat, and was deemed to be over the age of 25-years-old.
The minor, whose identity is protected by the courts, claimed he was a teenager when he entered the country illegally and provided immigration officials with a copy of a Taskira—an Afghan identity card— that he said proved his age.
However, he was “assigned” a new date of birth by the Home Office who doubted his claims, before being placed in adult accommodation for almost a year.
He was only moved to foster care after immigration lawyers launched legal proceedings against the department.
During a two-day hearing in July, the First Tribunal heard how despite social workers and the boy’s foster carer deeming him to be a child, the Home Office persisted with its view he was an adult using “avoiding” behaviour to reveal his real age.
Six-Month Journey
They included a clipping of a lifestyle feature from Forbes magazine titled: “What people really mean when they say, ‘I don’t know,’” a report from well-known razor manufacturer Gillette on when boys should start shaving and, “guesswork and speculation” derived from newspapers articles about the Taliban.The court heard how the boy, born in Tora Kala in the Kapisa province of Afghanistan, does not know his date of birth or exact age.
He grew up with his mother, father and five siblings in a mud dwelling and helped on a family farm growing pomegranates, wheat, corn and radish.
He attended school for six years, but his education was intermittent due to the instability in his area. He is not fully literate as a result.
His father was killed in crossfire between the Taliban and the government in 2021. A short time later his younger brother was abducted by the Taliban and died.
The boy’s body was returned to the family by the Red Cross when soon after, he was threatened by the Taliban and decided to leave Afghanistan with the intention of seeking asylum to the UK.
Over six months he travelled through Iran, then Turkey before crossing to Greece in a boat before travelling to Austria via Serbia, Macedonia and Hungary on foot.
He describes “a harrowing journey” when he often did not have enough to eat and was tired.
He was also was also subjected to physical violence. After travelling to France via Switzerland, he lived on the streets and made several attempts to cross to the UK.
The immigrant eventually boarded a dinghy with about 40 other men and at some point, the boat he was in started breaking up.
He was rescued by the coastguard and taken to Dover in October 2021 before being processed by immigration.
He was told by the officers that they believed that he was over 25. He denied this, and said he had a photograph of his identity card on his phone.
However, he claims officials said that was not sufficient, and he would need to obtain the original document with a translation.
He asked how he would be able to do this if he could not contact his family.
Foster Care
He was placed in Home Office paid hotel accommodation for over 11 months before being assisted by an immigration lawyer.Copies of his identity document were then provided to the Home Office before an initial age assessment by officials was carried out.
By that time, he had been placed in the care of a foster family as an “unaccompanied asylum seeking child.”
According to court documents, an initial age test result found him to be over 21.
His lawyers then referred his case for judicial review, during which time another age test was carried out, this time finding him younger again, around the of 18.
Legal counsel for the Home Office argued that the applicant was not credible and his identity document was sent to him after he arrived in the UK and questioned its authenticity.
Home Office lawyers also said it was reliying on the second full age assessment decision with the assessors’ view is that the applicant appears older than 18 and “noted in particular the applicant’s thick eyebrows, stubble, defined Adam’s apple and triangular face shape.”
Assessing evidence put forward by the respondents, the judge said he was approaching the assessment with a “significant degree of caution.”
He said the Home Office findings “rely on observations made about, appearance, behaviour and overall demeanour which are inherently subjective and not properly capable of bearing much evidential weight.”
He said that in this assessment the assessors “rely substantially on the physical appearance of the applicant.”
Judge Owens also noted factual inaccuracies in the Home Office’s defence, including an out-of-date “information note” from the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board from July 1998 which states Taskiras are issued at birth.
They also put forward an article from the Guardian newspaper regarding the conflict in which his father and brother were both killed, and argued this proved that the Afghan national’s claim his journey from Afghanistan did not take six months.
The judge said: “In my view this was illogical and unfair. It has never been the applicant’s evidence that his brother was killed in a specific incident at a specific time. The Taliban have been active in Kapisa province for many years. The assessors have used guesswork and speculation.”
Report Failings
The judge also pointed to a reference from a report from razor manufacturer Gillette on the age at which males start shaving.He said that it “takes the report nowhere and could in fact be said to support the applicant’s evidence about his age because his account is that he started shaving shortly before he came to the UK.”
He added: “There is further a very odd reference to a Forbes.com article ‘What people really mean when they say: ‘I don’t know,’ which appears to relate to a discussion about USA business practices.
“It is entirely unclear why such an article would be used to assess the credibility of a putative child particularly when the respondent has their own non-statutory guidance.
“Similarly, the assessors, without any professional expertise or an explanation of how they came to such a diagnosis, form the view from another online article that the applicant has a ‘dependent personality’ which they use to explain his lack of maturity, rather than attributing it to his young age.”
Judge Owens said he found the applicant’s evidence and testimony credible, despite his difficulties with literacy and trauma.
“I am satisfied that the Taskira is reliable evidence of his age,” he said.
“I have taken into account that the applicant’s evidence was broadly consistent, that the respondent’s cross-examination did not undermine his evidence.”
The judge also said he’d taken into account third-party evidence supportive of the applicant and that the evidence contained in the age assessment “fails to detract from the applicant’s evidence.”
He added he places “little weight on the assessment because of the failings in the report.”
He ruled that the Afghan was indeed a minor when he reached the UK and set his date of birth as May 31, 2005, meaning he was age 16 on his arrival in the UK in October 2021 and “as at the date of the hearing is aged 18.”
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
