Overview
- Reform UK, which set out the pledge Monday at a Westminster press conference, said it would review five years of approved asylum cases and revoke status for those found to have entered illegally or overstayed, estimating about 400,000 people in scope.
- The party said those targeted would be detained in large modular “pop up” sites holding roughly 22,500 people at a time and processed by a new UK Deportation Command dedicated to removals.
- Nigel Farage added an offer of up to £1,000 for voluntary departure and claimed savings of £14.3 billion over the next parliament and £137 billion over the long term.
- Economists and refugee groups challenged the figures and practicality, pointing to fewer than 3,000 existing removal beds and warning that reopening hundreds of thousands of cases would overwhelm Home Office teams and the courts.
- To push the plan through, Reform says it would pass an Illegal Migration (Mass Deportation) Act and pull the UK out of the ECHR and the 1951 Refugee Convention, a stance spotlighted after 602 Channel crossings were recorded Saturday, taking 2026 arrivals past 6,000.