Children who arrive in the UK on small boats could be searched to check if they are concealing phone sim cards in their mouths under new Home Office rules.
New measures will allow immigration enforcement officials to seize phones at the border if it is believed they contain useful intelligence about people-smugglers.
Officers will have the power to make new arrivals remove an outer coat, jacket or gloves at UK ports to search for devices. They will also be able to conduct searches inside someone’s mouth for a hidden sim card or small electronic device.
Home Office sources confirmed that, if deemed clearly necessary and proportionate, children could also be subjected to these searches.
Charities have raised concerns about the move and refugees have said they do not believe the Home Office will find any useful intelligence on the phones of new arrivals.
One Syrian refugee said: “I never heard of any asylum seeker hiding a sim card in their mouth. When we crossed the Channel the smugglers told us to delete everything from our phones.
“People with cheap phones just threw them in the sea while people who had decent phones left them with friends in northern France and asked them to mail them via DHL if they reached the UK safely. I think this is a show by Shabana [Mahmood].”
Maddie Harris, of the Humans for Rights Network, which provides support to young asylum seekers, said: “People should be treated with dignity and respect, not as criminals subject to invasive searches and interrogatory questioning violating their privacy.
“Most who arrive in small boats, particularly children, will be traumatised by horrific journeys characterised by violence. [The] Home Office should prioritise recovery over criminality.”
Home Office officials say the mobile phone searches will enable them to collect intelligence on asylum seekers’ journeys and to arrest people-smugglers. Immigration, police and National Crime Agency (NCA) officers will be able to search migrants for phones at the border without arresting them, they said.
The NCA and police investigators will also be able to use new interim serious crime prevention orders and take immediate action to ban suspects under investigation from using mobile phones, laptops and accessing social media.
The new rules are part of the border security, asylum and immigration bill, which is expected to receive royal assent this week.
The Home Office was found by the high court to have acted unlawfully in 2022 when it had a blanket unpublished policy to confiscate the mobile phones of small boat arrivals. Officials said at the time that the purpose of the phone seizures was to obtain intelligence about smugglers.
The minister for border security and asylum, Alex Norris, said: “Organised criminal networks rely on phone contacts and social media to recruit migrants for Channel crossings.
“These new powers will allow law enforcement to seize illegal migrants’ phones before an arrest so we can gather intelligence and shut down these vile smuggling gangs before they attempt to risk more lives in these dangerous journeys.”
Sile Reynolds, the head of asylum advocacy at Freedom from Torture, said: “Using invasive powers to search through the clothing – and even inside the mouths – of desperate and traumatised people when they have just survived a terrifying journey across the Channel is a dystopian act of brutality.
“These new powers, which will be used indiscriminately against all those who arrive seeking safety by small boat, risk treating all refugees as a security threat. Such blatant disregard for the universal human right to privacy is outrageous.”
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