4 reasons Reform’s mass deportation plan is “almost impossible”

Experts spoke to Left Foot Forward about the feasibility of Nigel Farage’s deportation plan

While Reform UK likes to try and paint deporting asylum seekers and refugees as straightforward, in reality, it is anything but. The Migration Observatory and a barrister give their insights into why.

1. Agreements between states are crucial

Nigel Farage and Zia Yusuf claimed they would deport 500,000-600,000 over the course of five years, by sending migrants back to their countries. 

Barrister and co-chair of the Society of Labour Lawyers Adrian Berry KC explained that countries have to agree to take refugees back, and “If they don’t agree to take them, then they don’t go”.

Reform has even said it would pay the Taliban to return migrants to Afghanistan. Berry pointed out that while the Taliban has said that it would be open to working on a deportation deal with Reform UK, this “would be very dangerous from a UK perspective”. He warned that people returned to Afghanistan “would be at risk of harm due to the behaviour of the Taliban government”.

He also raised doubts about the Taliban’s reliability as a partner in administering such a scheme: “How confident could you be that they would abide by whatever the conditions were of return?”.

Dr Mihnea Cuibus, researcher at the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, noted in an analysis for Left Foot Forward, that “There are many countries of origin that the UK struggles to return migrants to, and – as demonstrated by the experience of the Rwanda scheme – any third country arrangement would be difficult to scale up in a way that doesn’t lead to very high costs.

2. Identity issues

Berry explains that states are supposed to take back their own nationals, “but in reality there are often questions about identity and some states are reluctant to take certain people back”. 

He noted that if someone arrives in the UK who has travelled here on a lorry, “they may not have any documents and proving who they are is quite difficult.”

The immigration barrister added that even if a state accepts that it should take back one of its nationals, it may not want people who have left to seek asylum to return.

He said: “States often don’t want to take back people who have left because they don’t like the politics in the country of origin. The potential receiving state may not view those people very favourably because they will be pleased to have them out of their country and beyond their  borders.”

If someone did get to the point of having their identity verified and being at risk of deportation, the courts may use common law to challenge it. Berry said: “it would be contrary to common law to return someone to a place where they’d be at risk of torture”.

He added that returning someone in such circumstances would be challenged by the courts “as being contrary to civilised behaviour”.

3. Deportation at scale “almost impossible”

In 2024, around 34,000 people were returned from the UK, including 8,200 enforced returns. For Reform UK to claim they would ramp this up to around 120,000 returns a year is a huge increase.

Berry noted that for all the same reasons that it is complex to deport one individual, it would be even more complex to deport people at scale. 

He said: “It’s not straightforward. That’s why individual cases sometimes take a long time and doing it at scale and collectively presents all those problems, and multiplies them. 

“Doing it collectively is almost impossible because you need to prove the identity of each person individually—and doing that for each person may not be achievable all at the same time,” Berry added.

The Migrant Observatory noted: “There are a number of significant logistical challenges that any government would need to address to ramp up removals to such a significant extent.” 

They explained that “detecting so many unauthorised migrants would require a ramp up in enforcement activities and staff, detention spaces would need to be expanded to accommodate so many detainees, and a lack of chartered flights and trained staff are likely to prove a significant bottleneck.

4. Costs

Reform UK has estimated that its deportation plan would cost £10 billion over five years, and save £7 billion. The £10 billion figure was broken down into £4bn for detention, £1.5bn for flights, and £2bn for deals.  

The Migrant Observatory noted that the impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill put the cost of flights and escorts at £22,000 per person. If a future government did remove 600,000 people, flights would end up costing £13.2bn.

The National Audit Office estimate on flights to Rwanda put the cost at £11,000 per person just for flights which would mean £6.6 billion, excluding escorts.

Dr Cuibus said that an estimated £1.5bn for flights would amount to roughly £2,500 per person, assuming that Reform achieves 600,000 removals, which is far lower than any previous estimates. If the number of removals were significantly smaller, this figure would be more plausible.

The Migrant Observatory’s analysis notes that it is difficult to calculate how much building 24,000 spaces in deportation centres would cost. There are currently 2,200 detention centre spaces, with 290 more set to become available. 160 will become available in December at Campfield Detention Centre, and 130 will become available at Haslar “in the near future”. 

Berry also noted: “It’s very expensive to organise flights, organise the safety of the passenger in transit, organise people who are to accompany them. It costs a lot of money and that requires a lot of organisation.”

He added that to achieve anything beyond the current level of deportations and carry out mass deportations would require “vast expense”.

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward