The Home Office, Britain’s interior ministry, said the new powers would support investigations aimed at dismantling criminal gangs suspected of smuggling migrants across the Channel.
The government’s tougher stance on migration has been criticised by some rights groups, which argue that some policies scapegoat migrants and fuel racism and violence.
“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,” said Sile Reynolds, head of Asylum Advocacy at Freedom from Torture.

The Labour government has been hardening its immigration policies, above all on illegal immigration, in efforts to stem the soaring popularity of the populist Reform UK party, which has driven the immigration agenda.

















