Echoing Trump, Britain’s Nigel Farage Promises Mass Deportations of Asylum Seekers

Nigel Farage, the leader of the United Kingdom’s hard-right Reform Party, has promised to carry out mass deportations of asylum seekers and people who arrive in the country illegally if he becomes prime minister. Echoing President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation program in the United States, Farage said he would begin detaining all illegal immigrants “immediately” at military bases across the country if his party triumphs in the election. “If you come to the UK illegally, you will be detained and deported and never, ever allowed to stay, period. That is our big message from today,” Farage said on Tuesday. Read More: Britain Is Getting the Immigration Debate All Wrong His party has grown in popularity as the Labour government has struggled to deal with some 28,000 people crossing the sea by boat to arrive in the U.K. in 2025. Protests took place across the country this weekend outside hotels where asylum seekers were being temporarily housed. Farage, who is friends with Trump and is known outside of the U.K. as one of the leading campaigners behind Brexit, described illegal immigration as a “scourge” as he outlined his plans at a press conference. “The only way we will stop the boats is by detaining and deporting absolutely anyone that comes via that route,” Farage said. “And if we do that, the boats will stop coming within days.” His plan, which he named “Operation Restoring Justice,” would include the deportation of 600,000 asylum seekers, including women and children, who would be sent back to their own countries or third-party nations. It is unclear how Farage would meet that target, however. When asylum requests were at their record high in June 2024, there were 224,742 cases in the system, according to government data. But there are currently fewer than 100,000 people awaiting a decision on their asylum claim. The deportations of asylum seekers and people arriving in the U.K. illegally, according to Farage’s plan, would occur on arrival and with no right of appeal. To do this, Farage concedes that his party would have to bypass or withdraw from specific human rights conventions, and he specifically named repealing the 1998 Human Rights Act and leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Legal experts have criticized the legality and reality of Operation Restoring Justice, with former Attorney General Dominic Grieve telling The Independent that the courts would likely block the plan under British common law. Other experts note that the cost of this mass deportation effort would be astronomical Farage has made clear that he is taking inspiration from Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration in the U.S. In an interview with The Times this weekend, he named Trump when discussing his plans to send asylum seekers back to countries like Afghanistan and Eritrea. Farage said he would pay these countries to return migrants. Read More: Trump’s Attacks on Immigrants are an Attack on us All “We have enormous muscle on these things,” he said. “We can be nice to people, we can be nice to other countries, or we can be very tough to other countries. But all the diplomatic levers that we have, if we have to use them, on visas, on trade, sanctions … I mean, Trump has proved this point quite comprehensively.” Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats immediately pushed back against Farage’s plans and the idea of “ripping up” human rights conventions. Party leader Daisy Cooper said in a statement that “Winston Churchill would be turning in his grave.” The U.K. has been hit by a wave of anti-migrant protests in recent months, with two days of protests this past weekend targeting hotels housing asylum seekers. The protests were sparked after a hotel resident allegedly tried to kiss a 14-year-old girl and was charged with sexual assault. There are more asylum seekers in hotels than usual this year, with figures showing 32,000 asylum seekers— an 8% increase during Keir Starmer’s first year in office. Polls show that immigration is one of —if not the—most important issues for the electorate this year.