Suella Braverman plans to use X-rays to verify child refugees' ages

UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has landed herself in another controversy by revealing her plan to have child refugees undergo X-rays to verify their age.

Braverman is already under fire for using inflammatory language about migrants. She had recently said that the UK was facing an "invasion" on its southern coast.

On Monday, she said that "robust" new checks would be introduced to verify the age of those arriving in England seeking asylum. Braverman claimed that such checks were necessary because most Albanian migrants were adult males, "not overwhelmingly female, children, or elderly, and this assertion of being a child is something that we are going to repress."

Her predecessor, Priti Patel, also came up with a similar proposal last year. A group has also been set up to advise ministers on the same, per a report in The Independent.

"In the new year we will put in place more robust age assessment procedures so that there is less abuse of this issue," she said.

Braverman has been highly critical of refugees. Her "invasion" comments came just a day after a firebomb attack at an immigration centre in Dover, Kent.

"Let's stop pretending they are all refugees in distress. The whole country knows that is not true," she said. Braverman has also been accused of keeping migrants at the processing centre in Kent for a longer period than necessary.

New arrivals at such centers are expected to spend 24 hours there before moving on to longer-term accommodation, but several reports have claimed that people are being kept there for weeks. But she has rejected all reports claiming that she had been keeping migrants in processing centres for too long.

Braverman has been at the centre of controversy since Liz Truss' time. She was forced to resign by former PM Liz Truss for sending a government document from her personal email to an employee of a member of parliament.