Last summer, a woman was arrested at Gatwick Airport after she arrived from Nigeria with a very young baby girl. The woman had been living in West Yorkshire with her husband and children, and before leaving the UK for Africa had told her GP she was pregnant. That was not true.
When the woman returned about a month later with the baby, she was arrested on suspicion of trafficking.
The case, the second the BBC has followed through the Family Court in recent months, reveals what experts say is a worrying trend of babies possibly being brought to the UK unlawfully – some from so-called “baby factories” in Nigeria. The woman, who we are calling Susan, is Nigerian, but had been living in England since June 2023, with her husband and children.
A careworker with leave to remain in Britain, Susan claimed she was pregnant. But scans and blood tests showed that wasn’t true. Instead, they revealed Susan had a tumour, which doctors feared could be cancerous. But she refused treatment.
Susan insisted her previous pregnancies had been invisible on scans, telling her employer, “my babies are always hidden”. She also claimed she’d been pregnant for up to 30 months with her other children.
Susan had travelled to Nigeria in early June 2024, saying she wanted to have her baby there, and then contacted her local hospital in Britain, to say she had given birth. Doctors were concerned and contacted children’s services.
Arriving back in the UK with the baby girl – who we’re calling Eleanor – Susan was stopped and arrested by Sussex Police.
She was bailed and the lead police force on this confirmed there is no active investigation at the moment.
Credit: bbc.com
