Falmouth & Penryn Welcome Refugees are holding a vigil on Monday for the 200 missing children from Government approved hotels.

There will be a silence whilst 200 candles are lit followed by a candelight procession down Church Street to The Cornish Bank.

The vigil comes after the The immigration minister Robert Jenrick admitted this week that 200 children remained missing after being housed in hotels since July 2021.

The admission came after Brighton Green Party MP Caroline Lucas tabled an urgent question asking what steps the government had taken to trace the missing children.

Mr Jenrick said more than 4,600 asylum-seeking children had been accommodated in six hotels since July 2021, and 440 of them had gone missing. Some were later found but 200 remained missing and 13 of them were under 16.

An investigation in Brighton revealed that dozens of asylum seekers have been kidnapped by gangs from a hotel in the city run by the Home Office in what is apparently a pattern being repeated along the south coast of England.

According to a report in The Observer, a whistleblower, who works for Home Office contractor Mitie, and child protection sources described children being abducted off the street outside the hotel and put into cars.

The source said: “Children are literally being picked up from outside the building, disappearing and not being found. They’re being taken from the street by traffickers.”

The newspaper also reported that the Home Office was repeatedly warned by police that vulnerable occupants – asylum-seeking children who have arrived in the UK with no parents or carers – would be targeted by criminal networks.

Figures show that around 600 unaccompanied children have passed through the unnamed hotel in Brighton the past 18 months, with 136 reported missing.

More than half of these – 79 – remain unaccounted for.

Data released in October last year showed 222 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children were missing from hotels being run by the Home Office.

The vigil will start at 5.30pm on The Moor.