Nigel Farage will set out plans for mass deportations of small boat migrants if he wins power in a press conference this morning.
The Reform UK leader will unveil proposals including arresting asylum seekers on arrival, automatic detention and forced deportation to countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea.
They also include deals with third countries, which could include reviving the Conservatives‘ Rwanda agreement, and sending Channel migrants to British overseas territories such as Ascension Island as a “fallback” option.
The Clacton MP said the plans could see hundreds of thousands of people deported and five charter flights taking off from the UK every day.
It comes as more than 28,000 people have crossed the Channel so far this year in a record for this point as protests have been erupting outside hotels housing asylum seekers.
Nigel Farage Makes Huge Migration Announcement Unveiling Mass Deportation Plan
Nigel Farage has placed mass deportation at the centre of Reform UK’s immigration strategy, outlining a far-reaching programme that would seek to identify, detain and remove people living in Britain without legal status.
The proposal, known as Operation Restoring Justice, represents one of the most extensive immigration enforcement programmes put forward by a British political party in recent years. Reform says the policy would operate over five years and would involve a new enforcement organisation, expanded detention facilities, changes to human-rights legislation and a major diplomatic effort to secure agreements for the return of migrants.
The policy has become a defining part of Farage’s political platform as Reform argues that successive governments have failed to control illegal migration and the small-boats crossings in the English Channel.
According to Reform’s current policy programme, the party would establish a UK Deportation Command specifically tasked with identifying, detaining and deporting people it considers to have no legal right to remain in Britain. The party says the programme would involve the rapid construction or expansion of detention capacity and could ultimately operate as many as five deportation flights a day.
The scale of the proposal is significant.
Reform has previously said that as many as 600,000 people could be deported during the first parliamentary term under its plan. Earlier versions of the proposal focused heavily on people who had crossed the Channel in small boats and whose asylum claims had not resulted in a lawful right to remain.
Farage has argued that the central principle is straightforward: people who enter Britain illegally should not be able to remain indefinitely.
However, implementing such a policy would involve considerably more than organising flights. It would require identifying individuals, establishing their immigration status, resolving legal challenges, obtaining travel documentation and securing agreement from countries willing to receive people being removed.
A new deportation command
One of the most prominent elements of the proposal is the creation of the UK Deportation Command.
Reform has compared the proposed organisation with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement system. In February 2026, the party again outlined plans for an agency capable of removing hundreds of thousands of people and said it could deport up to 288,000 people annually, equivalent to roughly five deportation flights every day.
The party has also proposed a substantial increase in detention capacity.
Under the earlier Operation Restoring Justice proposal, Reform said former military facilities could be converted into detention centres. It estimated that facilities capable of holding around 24,000 people could be created within 18 months, with an estimated cost running into billions of pounds.
A further proposal would bring information from multiple government bodies together in an effort to identify people who have no legal right to remain.
The party has described a potential data-fusion system involving information from organisations including the Home Office, police, NHS, DVLA, HMRC and financial institutions. Such a system would represent a significant expansion of immigration enforcement capabilities.
The small-boats crisis
The Channel crossings provide the political backdrop to Reform’s policy.
The party has repeatedly argued that the existing asylum system creates incentives for people to make dangerous journeys across the English Channel. Its proposed response is not simply to increase patrols but to change the consequences of arriving illegally.
Reform’s wider Operation Fortress policy proposes using the Royal Navy and other authorities to intercept migrant boats in the Channel and return those aboard to France or Belgium under escort.
The deportation programme is intended to work alongside that policy.
The logic presented by Reform is that stopping future crossings requires migrants to believe that an illegal journey will not result in a long-term opportunity to remain in Britain.
That approach, however, raises difficult questions about the interaction between immigration enforcement and asylum law.
People arriving irregularly can make claims for asylum, and individual cases may involve questions concerning persecution, family circumstances, trafficking, medical conditions or other legal protections. Consequently, any attempt to remove very large numbers of people would have to operate within, or deliberately change, the legal framework governing those cases.
Human rights law at the centre of the proposal
This is why Reform’s migration announcement is also a proposal for major constitutional and legal change.
The party says it would withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act 1998, and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. Its policy document explicitly connects these legal changes to its deportation programme.
The distinction between the two is important.
The Human Rights Act is domestic UK legislation that gives effect to Convention rights within the UK legal system. The European Convention on Human Rights itself is an international treaty.
Reform’s proposal therefore goes beyond simply changing British legislation. Leaving the Convention would represent a major change in Britain’s relationship with the European human-rights system.
The party argues that the existing framework gives courts too many opportunities to delay or prevent deportations. Opponents argue that removing or weakening those safeguards could undermine legal protections for vulnerable people and create conflicts with Britain’s international obligations.
The disagreement is therefore not simply about immigration numbers. It concerns the balance between border enforcement, judicial oversight and individual rights.
The question of 600,000 deportations
The figure of 600,000 has attracted particular attention because it illustrates the scale of the proposed operation.
When the policy was unveiled in August 2025, Reform said that approximately 600,000 asylum seekers could potentially be removed during the first parliamentary term. Farage also acknowledged that determining how far back authorities should examine individual cases would be one of the difficult aspects of the plan.
The practical question is how such a number could be achieved.
Deportation normally requires a destination country willing to receive the person. Documentation must often be obtained, transportation arranged and legal issues resolved. Some governments are reluctant to accept forced returns, particularly where nationality is disputed or documentation is unavailable.
Reform has therefore proposed using diplomatic and economic pressure.
Its current policy says that countries refusing to accept their nationals could face visa sanctions. Earlier proposals also included visa freezes for countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia if they refused to cooperate with removals.
That would turn immigration enforcement into a foreign-policy issue as well as a domestic one.
The financial argument
Reform also presents the deportation programme as an economic policy.
Its published immigration document estimates that implementing Operation Restoring Justice would cost around £10 billion over five years, while arguing that the existing system costs taxpayers considerably more. The party says the programme could generate substantial savings over the following years.
Those figures are Reform’s own estimates rather than established government forecasts.
The financial debate is likely to focus on both sides of the calculation.
A mass deportation programme would require detention centres, immigration officers, transport, legal processing, diplomatic negotiations and additional administrative capacity. There would also be costs associated with appeals and court proceedings.
At the same time, the government already spends substantial sums on asylum accommodation, immigration enforcement and removals.
The central disagreement is therefore over whether the long-term savings claimed by Reform would outweigh the upfront and continuing costs of implementing its proposed system.
Britain already has a removal system
The announcement also needs to be considered against the existing government’s immigration policy.
The UK government has already expanded detention and removal capacity. In June 2026, the Home Office announced projects at Haslar and Campsfield immigration removal centres that it said would increase detention capacity by 40%. The government said nearly 70,000 people with no right to remain had been removed since it took office.
This provides an important distinction between the parties’ positions.
The argument is not necessarily about whether people without a legal right to remain should be removed. British governments already conduct deportations and enforced returns.
The major difference concerns the scale, speed, legal framework and institutional structure proposed by Reform.
Reform’s plan would dramatically increase the capacity of the state to identify and remove people, while simultaneously changing the legal framework within which immigration decisions are challenged.
The wider immigration programme
Mass deportation is only one part of Reform’s broader migration policy.
The party also proposes replacing indefinite leave to remain with renewable five-year visas, introducing higher salary thresholds for some migrants, imposing stricter English-language requirements and limiting access to benefits for foreign nationals.
The stated objective is to reduce long-term migration and make citizenship a more important dividing line in access to certain state services.
The party describes this as part of a move towards what it calls net-negative immigration.
These policies would affect different categories of migrants in different ways, making implementation considerably more complicated than the headline promise of deporting illegal migrants alone.
What happens next?
For the moment, the proposals remain political commitments rather than an implemented deportation programme.
If a future government attempted to introduce them, Parliament would have to consider the necessary legislation, while courts would inevitably become involved in interpreting the new rules. International agreements, diplomatic relations and the practical ability of other countries to receive deportees would also influence the outcome.
The treatment of children and families would present another particularly difficult question.
Farage has previously acknowledged that dealing with children is more complicated than dealing with adults, while confirming that his proposed system could involve women and children among those affected.
That issue illustrates the broader challenge facing any government seeking to implement deportations on a much larger scale.
The debate over Reform’s plan is therefore likely to continue well beyond the headline figure of 600,000.
At its core, Farage’s migration announcement proposes a fundamental change in how Britain approaches illegal immigration: substantially larger enforcement capacity, faster removals, tougher diplomatic pressure and major changes to the legal framework surrounding deportation.
Supporters of the proposal see it as a means of restoring control over Britain’s borders and reducing the incentives for illegal migration. Critics have raised questions about human rights, legal safeguards, cost, administrative feasibility and Britain’s international obligations.
What is clear is that immigration will remain one of the major dividing lines in British politics. Reform UK’s mass-deportation proposal has given that debate a particularly concrete form, setting out not merely a political objective but a proposed system of detention, identification, diplomatic pressure and removal.
Whether such a system could operate at the scale envisaged by Farage would ultimately depend on legislation, parliamentary decisions, court rulings, international cooperation and the practical capacity of the British state.