Newly introduced Home Office regulations will grant immigration enforcement officers the authority to search children who arrive in the UK on small boats, including checks inside their mouths for concealed phone SIM cards. The measures, part of the forthcoming border security, asylum and immigration bill, aim to gather intelligence on people-smuggling networks but have been met with fierce criticism from refugee charities and human rights advocates.
Scope of New Search Powers
The rules empower officials at UK ports to seize mobile phones from new arrivals if the devices are believed to contain useful information about smugglers. Officers can instruct individuals to remove outer clothing such as coats, jackets, or gloves to facilitate searches for electronic devices. Most controversially, the powers extend to conducting searches inside a person's mouth for a hidden SIM card or a small electronic storage device.
Home Office sources have confirmed that these intrusive searches could be applied to children if deemed "clearly necessary and proportionate." This provision has raised significant alarm among groups supporting young asylum seekers, who often arrive traumatised after perilous Channel crossings.
Criticism from Charities and Refugees
Maddie Harris, of the Humans for Rights Network, which aids young asylum seekers, strongly criticised the approach. "People should be treated with dignity and respect, not as criminals subject to invasive searches and interrogatory questioning violating their privacy," she stated. Harris emphasised that the Home Office should prioritise recovery and support over treating traumatised individuals as security threats.
The testimony of those who have made the journey challenges the likely effectiveness of the policy. One Syrian refugee, commenting on the new rules, expressed scepticism: "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." He explained that migrants often dispose of cheap phones at sea or arrange for better ones to be mailed later, suggesting the intelligence yield would be minimal.
Government Justification and Legal Context
Minister for Border Security and Asylum, Alex Norris, defended the powers, stating: "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."
The powers will be available to immigration, police, and National Crime Agency (NCA) officers at the border without requiring an arrest. Additionally, the NCA and police will be able to use new interim serious crime prevention orders to immediately ban suspects under investigation from using phones, laptops, or accessing social media.
This legislative move follows a 2022 High Court ruling that found the Home Office had acted unlawfully by operating a blanket, unpublished policy to confiscate the mobile phones of all small boat arrivals. Officials had argued then, as now, that the seizures were necessary to obtain intelligence on smuggling operations.
A 'Dystopian Act of Brutality'
Sile Reynolds, Head of Asylum Advocacy at Freedom from Torture, delivered a scathing assessment of the new rules. "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," she said.
Reynolds warned that the indiscriminate use of these powers against all who arrive by small boat risks framing every refugee as a security threat, representing a "blatant disregard for the universal human right to privacy." The bill is expected to receive royal assent imminently, bringing these contentious search powers into effect.
