Sir Mo Farah’s decision to reveal that he was a victim of human trafficking as a child has sparked questions over how he would be treated if he arrived in the UK today.
The decorated Olympic athlete disclosed his experience as part of a BBC documentary, The Real Mo Farah, saying he had decided to tell his story “whatever the cost”.
The father-of-four, now 39, told how he was born in the unrecognised breakaway state of Somaliland as Hussein Abdi Kahin.
Sir Mo had previously said his parents brought him to the UK as a child, but revealed that his father was in fact killed in the civil war and he was separated from his mother.
At the age of nine, he was told he was going to Europe to live with relatives, and was initially excited.
But a woman he had never met then told him to say his name was Mohammed, and gave him fake travel documents showing his photo next to the name “Mohamed Farah”.
Sir Mo recalled going through a passport check in the UK using the fake documents, before being taken to a home in Hounslow, west London.
A piece of paper the child had carried with him with the details of a relative in Britain was ripped up and he was forced to work in domestic labour, caring for the family’s children.
Sir Mo was initially not allowed to attend school, but enrolled at a secondary school at the age of 12.
Teachers were told he was a refugee from Somalia but he eventually told his PE teacher, Alan Watkinson, the truth and moved to live with a friend’s mother.
Mr Watkinson applied for Sir Mo’s British citizenship – which he described as a “long process” – and in July 2000 he was recognised as a British citizen.
A Home Office spokesperson said it would be taking “no action whatsoever” against Sir Mo and that its guidance states that children are not considered complicit in “gaining citizenship by deception”.
The department denies treating Sir Mo differently because of his status, and says the same decision would be made for anyone in the same circumstances.
Immigration laws have undergone numerous changes in the three decades since Sir Mo arrived in Britain.
The current government has brought in a significant package of hardline laws in the Nationality and Borders Act, which seeks to make it easier to criminalise people reaching the UK irregularly and make it harder for them to stay in Britain.
Those laws are separate to the agreement to send asylum seekers deemed “inadmissible” for the British system because they have travelled through safe third countries to Rwanda.
The act puts new time limits on trafficking victims to provide the government with information supporting any claim for protection needed to stay in the UK.
The Home Office believes that it grants most trafficked children leave to remain in the UK under a procedure designed for child asylum seekers.
UASC (unaccompanied asylum-seeking child) leave, which normally applies to under-18s who have been refused refugee status, are granted leave to remain in the UK for 30 months, or until they turn 17-and-a-half, whichever is shorter.
Home Secretary Priti Patel and Rwandan minister Vincent Biruta, signed a ‘world-first’ migration and economic development partnership (Flora Thompson/PA)
