Home Office defends right to seize Channel asylum seekers’ phones

Refugees and asylums seekers at a makeshift camp in Dunkirk charging their phones via a generator set up by the Care4Calais charity. Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP/Getty Images

The Home Office has defended its right to seize the mobile phones of asylum seekers who cross the Channel in small boats, telling the high court it helps officials gather evidence about the people smugglers who organise such journeys.

In a four-day judicial review, three asylum seekers are claiming that the home secretary unlawfully operated an unpublished, secret, blanket policy to seize phones from small-boat arrivals. Lawyers for the home secretary said that while they accepted some aspects of the policy that operated in 2020 were unlawful, the policy to seize phones from some people who arrived and instruct them to provide pin numbers to unlock data, including phone numbers, emails and photos, was lawful.