Revealed: child migrants racially abused and threatened with violence at Home Office hotel

Whistleblower tells of threats and illegal detention in fresh revelations about failures that drove children into hands of criminals

Children seeking asylum in the UK were threatened and subjected to racist abuse by staff at a Home Office-run hotel, a whistleblower has claimed as pressure grows on the government to act over the growing crisis in the system.

The source, who worked in the Brighton hotel for more than a year, said that in such an environment of emotional abuse", scores of children, who had arrived in the UK without parents or a carer, were driven on to the streets and into the hands of criminals.