Record 1,300 migrants are caught pretending to be children this year as young adult men pose as teen boys to abuse asylum system

More than 1,300 asylum seekers were caught pretending to be children in the first half of the year - a record high.

Unaccompanied minors are far more likely to be granted asylum than adults, leading to some applicants faking their age in a bid to cheat the system.

Figures suggest this is an increasingly common tactic, with 1,317 migrants claiming to be children at the border deemed to be minors up to the end of June 2024.

This is the highest figure for the first six months of the year on record and eclipses the combined totals for 2017, 2018 and 2019.

A total of 2,122 age disputes were launched by officials amid fears people smugglers are telling migrants - who often arrive without documents - to claim to be teenagers.

The figures for 2024, obtained by The Sun , included 283 people from Afghanistan , 282 from Sudan, 236 from Vietnam and 140 from Eritrea.

Those who have used the tactic include Lawangeen Abdulrahimzai, who was convicted of murdering aspiring marine Thomas Roberts in Bournemouth town centre in March 2022.

Abdulrahimzai, 22, had murdered two other people in Serbia before he claimed asylum in the UK by pretending to be a 14-year-old orphan when he was actually 18.

The Afghan was put into foster care in Bournemouth and sent to school in the Dorset resort, where he began bullying young girls into sending him indecent pictures.

Abdulrahimzai had hoodwinked Border Force and the Home Office after arriving in Dorset on a Brittany Ferries service from Cherbourg on Boxing Day 2019. A judge later ruled his birthday was actually October 7, 2001.

On March 12, 2022, he stabbed 21-year-old Thomas Roberts twice in the chest after an argument with the aspiring soldier's friend about an e-scooter outside a Subway.

One of the most troubling examples of an asylum seeker pretending to be a child was Parsons Green terrorist Ahmed Hassan.

He posed as a 16-year-old before setting off a bomb on a Tube train in west London in 2017, injuring 23 people.

His real age remains unknown, but the judge who jailed the Iraqi for 34 years in 2018 said he was satisfied the bomber was between 18 and 21.

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, at the Old Bailey, added: 'I am satisfied that you lied about your date of birth on arrival in order to glean the special privileges accorded to children entering the UK.'

A Home Office probe in 2018 found an adult asylum seeker spent six weeks as a Year 11 pupil at Stoke High School in Ipswich.

A pupil posted a photo of Siavash Shah, thought to be Iranian, online and wrote: 'How's there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?'

And in 2010, Iraqi asylum seeker Rabar Hamad was studying for his GCSEs when he was found to be 20, a whole four years older than he claimed.

One in five people arriving by small boat now claims to be a child, the immigration minister revealed last week.

Dame Angela Eagle confirmed 20 per cent of current arrivals claim to be underage – some falsely – in a bid to 'get a better deal '.

'There is an issue about identifying correctly those who are children,' she told Labour Party conference in Liverpool last Monday.

'About 20 per cent of the people that come across in boats at the moment are claiming they're children. Not all of them are.

'And so clearly the signal has gone out that if you claim you're a child, then you're going to get a better deal.

'There are safeguarding issues one way or the other, if you let adults in the children's system, or children in the adults system, that we've got to try to sort out.'

Earlier this year the previous Conservative government was poised to introduce scientific age assessments of migrants who claim to be children.

Legal changes allow officials to use X-rays and other types of medical scans to help determine a person's true age.

It remains unclear whether Labour will continue introducing the new tests.

Some professional bodies representing doctors and dentists have indicated they will refuse to take part, claiming the tests are a breach of children's rights.

It follows a series of scandals in which asylum seekers claimed to be minors and even started attending British schools when, in reality, they were adults.

The oldest asylum seeker yet discovered pretending to be a child was actually found to be 41.

Migrants who claim to be under 18 receive better housing and support, a more sympathetic hearing in their asylum claim and are less likely to be detained.

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Dame Angela also accused Right-wing politicians of using talking about immigration in a way which encouraged 'overt racism'.

She said the Right of the Conservative Party 'got more and more obsessed with what Reform was doing that was very toxic indeed ... creating a space for overt racism on our streets'.

She added: 'Talking about asylum seekers in the way that some government ministers did ... gave at least a yellow flashing light to people that wanted to indulge in a discourse about people whose skin wasn't the colour that they wanted it to be.

'And I think creating that kind of toxic discourse around asylum is a real conflict.'

The issue of immigration is continuing to dominate the Conservative leadership race, with Robert Jenrick setting out plans to slash foreign aid for countries that don't take back failed asylum seekers from Britain.

Mr Jenrick called on Labour to end aid handouts and severely restrict visas to countries who refuse to cooperate with the UK on returns.

He claimed his plans would see a fivefold increase in deportations of people living illegally in the UK to more than 100,000 removals a year.

The former minister also said countries such as Vietnam, Turkey and Brazil, which have accounted for tens of thousands of asylum requests over the past few years, should be added to a list of 'safe' nations.

This would allow Britain to strike new agreements with these countries, similar to Mr Sunak's deal with Albania, in order to speed up the return of illegal migrants and foreign criminals, Mr Jenrick added.

The number of small boat migrants to have arrived since the start of the year recently topped 25,000.