Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, has announced plans to create a new deportation agency modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), capable of deporting up to 288,000 people annually. The party's home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, will outline the proposals in a speech on Monday, including ending indefinite leave to remain (ILR) and expanding stop-and-search powers.
Under the plans, the UK Deportation Command would have capacity to detain 24,000 migrants at once and operate five deportation flights daily. Yusuf will also call for leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and imposing a legal duty on the home secretary to remove illegal migrants. The party would replace ILR with a renewable five-year work visa with a high salary threshold, potentially affecting tens of thousands of current holders.
Yusuf will blame former Prime Minister Boris Johnson for increased net migration, accusing him of 'throwing open our borders'. He will argue that ILR grants 'a lifetime of living off the British taxpayer', though government data shows ILR holders make up only 2.7% of universal credit claimants. Labour has criticised the plans as 'divisive' and 'fundamentally un-British', with party chair Anna Turley calling them a 'direct attack on settled families'.
The speech will also address policing and extremism, with Yusuf pledging to end diversity initiatives in police forces, expand stop and search, and overhaul the Prevent programme to focus on Islamist extremism. He will propose banning the conversion of churches into mosques and proscribing the Muslim Brotherhood. 'We will protect British culture,' Yusuf will say, 'because a nation without a culture is not a nation at all.'
