UK Home Office Loses Track of Nearly 6,000 Asylum Seekers

The surge in withdrawn cases leads to accusations of asylum seekers being removed from lists without full assessment.

The UK Home Office has lost track of nearly 6,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been withdrawn, according to a letter to the Commons home affairs committee.
The number of withdrawn cases has quadrupled on the previous year, from 4,260, leading to claims that they are being wiped off the list without being fully assessed.
The Home Office is taking steps to urgently re-establish contact with the missing asylum seekers, who are among 17,000 whose claims have been withdrawn in the 12 months to September 2023.
The admission comes after the two most senior mandarins in the Home Office suggested they did not know where the 17,000 withdrawn asylum seekers were.
The Home Office was reprimanded by the statistics watchdog after the Government was accused of lying about clearing the legacy backlog of asylum cases.