It comes after the Green Party’s migration policies, which were voted on and passed by members previously, included abolishing immigration detention, giving illegal arrivals visas, providing asylum seekers with accommodation and allowing asylum seekers to lawfully work.

These have now been removed from its website.

“Even though illegal migrants will not be allowed to leave the sites, we are committing to not placing these detention sites in areas with a Reform MP or where Reform controls the council. Given the Green Party advocate for open borders and for an infinite number of undocumented men to come here, we will prioritise Green constituencies and Green controlled councils to locate these detention centres.

Constituencies with Green MPs currently include Gorton and Denton in Manchester, Bristol Central, North Herefordshire, Waveney Valley on the Norfolk-Suffolk border and Brighton Pavilion.

Greens and Reform UK are set to make major gains at local elections on Thursday, including potentially being the largest party on multiple councils.

Polanski’s Party is eyeing victory in inner London boroughs, parts of the Midlands and parts of the north of England.

Reform UK said it would build detention capacity for at least 24,000 illegal migrants at a time.

Home Office decisions about where to place detention centres, also known as immigration removal centres (IRCs), are taken in accordance with government procurement and planning rules.

But Reform UK said it will ensure that prioritising Green-controlled areas for building IRCs is not frustrated by legal challenges that “contradict democratic decisions”.

Mr Farage will need to introduce primary legislation, leave the European Convention of Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act to “stop or oust” the possibility of judicial reviews.

A Green Party spokesman said: “Reform keep making unserious announcements to try and distract voters from they fact they want to privatise our NHS. Greens are focused on building council housing, fixing our public services and bringing down the cost of living.”

Reform UK Vows to Prioritise Green Party Areas for Migrant Detention Centres

Reform UK has unveiled a controversial proposal to prioritise Green Party-controlled areas for new migrant detention centres, placing immigration policy at the centre of an increasingly sharp political contest between the two parties.

The proposal was announced by Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s then home affairs spokesperson, shortly before England’s 2026 local elections. Under the plan, a future Reform government would guarantee that new migrant detention facilities would not be placed in constituencies represented by a Reform MP or in council areas controlled by Reform. Instead, Green-held parliamentary constituencies and Green-run councils would be prioritised among the remaining areas.

Reform says the policy is linked to its wider plans for large-scale immigration detention and deportation. The party’s campaign material says it wants detention capacity for at least 24,000 people awaiting deportation.

The announcement immediately generated criticism from Labour, the Greens and other political opponents, who argued that the location of public infrastructure should not be determined by how residents vote.

Reform’s Detention Proposal

At the heart of the announcement is Reform UK’s broader immigration policy.

The party has argued that people who are in the United Kingdom unlawfully and are awaiting removal should be detained for a period before deportation. Its campaign material says that a future Reform government would create capacity for at least 24,000 detainees at any one time.

The proposal is therefore considerably larger than simply identifying locations for a small number of existing facilities.

Reform has linked the plan to its objective of removing people it considers to have no legal right to remain in Britain. The party has argued that greater detention capacity would be necessary if the government were to accelerate removals.

Its campaign website says detainees would remain in the centres while they awaited deportation.

However, the political controversy has focused less on the principle of detention itself than on the proposed geographical criteria.

Why Green Areas Were Targeted

Zia Yusuf explained the policy by pointing to the Green Party’s approach to immigration and borders.

Reform argues that Green politicians support substantially more liberal immigration policies. The party has used that disagreement to justify prioritising Green-held areas for detention infrastructure.

The proposal effectively establishes two categories of areas.

Constituencies with a Reform MP, or councils controlled by Reform, would be excluded from the proposed sites. Among the remaining areas, Green-held constituencies and Green-controlled councils would receive priority.

Reform’s campaign material makes the distinction explicit, saying that areas represented by Reform would be guaranteed not to receive a detention centre, while areas represented by or controlled by the Greens would be prioritised.

That has turned what might otherwise have been a conventional argument about immigration infrastructure into a debate about whether political representation should influence where national facilities are located.

The Political Argument Behind the Policy

From Reform’s perspective, the proposal is also an argument about political responsibility.

The party has portrayed the policy as allowing voters to experience the consequences of the immigration policies supported by the politicians they elect.

That argument is reflected in the language used by Yusuf when announcing the policy. Reform’s campaign presentation suggested that communities would effectively “get what they vote for”.

Supporters of the proposal can therefore interpret it as an attempt to give voters a direct connection between political choices and local consequences.

But the same mechanism has generated criticism because the people living in a particular constituency do not necessarily share the political views of their elected representatives.

A Green-controlled council can contain Conservative, Labour, Reform, Liberal Democrat and independent voters. Likewise, an area represented by a Green MP is not necessarily an area in which every resident supports the Green Party.

That distinction has become central to the controversy.

Green Party Reaction

The Green Party strongly rejected Reform’s proposal.

The policy was announced at a time when the Greens were themselves expanding their electoral presence. Zack Polanski had become an increasingly prominent figure in British politics, and the party was competing with Reform for attention as one of the country’s growing alternative political forces.

The proposal therefore had an obvious electoral dimension.

Critics argued that Reform was attempting to associate voting Green with the prospect of hosting detention facilities.

The Guardian reported that the announcement was seen by opponents as an attempt to sharpen the dividing line between Reform and the Greens ahead of local elections.

The controversy consequently extended beyond immigration policy into a broader debate about political campaigning and the relationship between national government decisions and local communities.

Labour’s Criticism

Labour politicians also attacked the announcement.

Labour Party chair Anna Turley described the proposal as “grotesque” and argued that threatening areas according to how they vote was inappropriate.

Her criticism reflected a broader Labour argument that national policy should be applied according to objective criteria rather than electoral behaviour.

This criticism also raises an important practical question.

If detention facilities are required, governments normally need to consider factors such as available land, transport connections, security, planning requirements, proximity to airports or ports and the cost of construction and operation.

A policy that gives political representation a determining role could potentially conflict with those practical considerations.

Reform, however, has presented its approach as a political choice connected to accountability and the views of local voters.

The Scale of the Proposed Facilities

The proposed capacity of at least 24,000 detainees is another major element of the debate.

Reform’s campaign material says that a future government would create detention capacity for at least 24,000 people awaiting deportation.

That would represent a substantial expansion of immigration detention infrastructure.

The party has linked the proposal to its broader mass-deportation programme, arguing that the current system does not have sufficient capacity to remove people quickly enough.

The scale of the proposal means that implementation would involve significant questions about funding, staffing, security, transportation, legal safeguards and the physical location of facilities.

The party has also promoted a draft “Mass Deportation (Detention) Bill” as part of the legislative framework for its approach. According to a fact-checking review of the proposal, the draft legislation would establish a minimum detention capacity and contain provisions relating to the construction and operation of the centres.

A New Front in the Reform-Green Rivalry

The dispute is particularly significant because Reform UK and the Greens increasingly compete for attention as alternative parties.

Both have challenged the traditional dominance of Labour and the Conservatives, although they do so from very different political positions.

Reform places strong emphasis on immigration control, national sovereignty and reducing what it regards as excessive immigration.

The Greens, under Polanski, have emphasised environmental policy alongside social and economic issues and have generally advocated a substantially more liberal approach to migration.

The detention-centre proposal therefore fits into a broader ideological contest.

Reform can use immigration to draw a sharp distinction between itself and the Greens. The Greens, meanwhile, can portray the policy as evidence of what they regard as an excessively punitive approach to migration.

The “Vote Green Get Illegals” Campaign

Reform also created an online campaign connected with the proposal.

The campaign was branded “Vote Green Get Illegals” and included a postcode checker intended to show whether an area could be prioritised for a detention centre.

The website explained that its map used electoral projections and existing political control to identify areas that might fall within the proposed categories. It cited polling and modelling from organisations including More in Common and JL Partners.

This is significant because the policy was not merely presented as a general statement about where facilities might be located.

It was communicated directly to individual voters through a postcode-based political campaign.

That approach intensified criticism that the proposal was designed partly as an electoral message rather than simply as an administrative plan for immigration detention.

Questions About Local Democracy

One of the central questions raised by the controversy concerns the relationship between national government and local voters.

If a future national government decided that detention facilities were necessary, residents could reasonably expect the locations to be selected according to practical and legal criteria.

The Reform proposal introduces a different principle: political representation becomes relevant to the location decision.

That does not necessarily mean that every Green voter would receive a detention centre, nor does Reform claim that every Green-controlled area would automatically host one.

Its stated policy is to prioritise such areas among those eligible, while excluding areas represented or controlled by Reform.

Nevertheless, the distinction has generated a wider discussion about whether individual voters should be treated as responsible for the policies of the politicians they elect.

Immigration and the 2026 Political Landscape

The controversy also illustrates how central immigration remains to British politics.

The issue has moved beyond questions about border enforcement and asylum processing into arguments about national identity, public services, housing, employment and the responsibilities of local communities.

For Reform, immigration is one of its defining political issues and a major point of differentiation from the established parties.

For the Greens, immigration forms part of a broader political philosophy that places greater emphasis on humanitarian obligations and a less restrictive approach to borders.

The clash between those positions makes immigration an especially visible battleground between Farage’s party and Polanski’s Greens.

What Happens If Reform Pursues the Policy?

A Reform government attempting to implement the proposal would still face substantial practical and legal questions.

The construction of detention facilities would require legislation, funding, land, personnel and operational arrangements. It would also have to operate within the legal framework governing immigration detention and individual rights.

The proposed 24,000-capacity system would therefore require considerably more than a political announcement.

The precise locations would also matter.

Even if political criteria were used to identify priority areas, individual sites would still have to be acquired, developed and operated. Questions about transport, security, planning and local services would remain.

The policy’s implementation would consequently be much more complicated than the slogan used during the campaign.

A Highly Divisive Immigration Proposal

Reform UK’s pledge to prioritise Green-controlled areas for migrant detention centres represents one of the party’s most politically distinctive immigration proposals.

Its supporters can view it as an attempt to connect electoral choices with political consequences and to challenge what Reform considers an overly liberal approach to migration.

Opponents see the proposal differently, arguing that essential national infrastructure should not be allocated according to voting patterns.

What is not disputed is that the announcement deliberately placed the Reform-Green divide at the centre of the immigration debate.

With Reform continuing to campaign on detention and deportation and the Greens seeking to expand their own electoral coalition, immigration is likely to remain one of the clearest areas of disagreement between the two parties.

The proposed detention-centre policy therefore matters not only because of the facilities themselves, but because it raises a larger question about how national immigration policy should interact with local democracy — and whether political disagreement should play any role in deciding where major public facilities are built.

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