Non-verbal black teenager who has never left UK detained at immigration centre

Boy who went missing from hospital arrested and held at Gatwick facility after being wrongly recorded as Nigerian

A woman has described how her 17-year-old black British son was found at an immigration detention centre after going missing while being treated for psychosis.

The boy - who is non-verbal - disappeared from a hospital in Kent, where he had been sectioned under the Mental Health Act, on 7 April. Two days later, he was arrested by British Transport Police (BTP) at Euston on suspicion of fare evasion, before being detained by Immigration Enforcement near Gatwick, despite being British.