Zia Yusuf and Nigel Farage stand next to a replica dinghy (Image: Victoria Jones/Shutterstock)
Nigel Farage has warned that Labour is letting terrorists, serious criminals and dangerous sex offenders into the country as he vowed to shut the asylum system. Standing in front of a replica mega dinghy at a press conference in Kent, the Reform UK leader warned that Britain is facing its biggest security emergency linked to an asylum crisis in history.
And he said his party would deport “north of one million people” if it wins the next election. Mr Farage’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, told the Daily Express that “evil” people are among the thousands crossing the Channel on small boats. Reform vowed to close the asylum system for five years and order food safety investigators, environmental health teams and trading standards to help immigration officials snare illegal migrants living in the UK. They would carry out “basic” immigration checks, it is understood.
In an alarming assessment of the small boats crisis, Mr Farage said in Kent: “What is happening is a national security emergency. We are letting terrorists come into the country.
“We are letting serious criminals come into the country. We’re letting dangerous sex offenders into the country. And our primary purpose is to stop that from happening. We have got to be very, very careful about not letting any more of our enemies into the country.”
Mr Farage declared he wanted Britain to return to being a “normal country”. He said: “Nothing radical or crazy. We want to get back to being a normal country, a country that puts national security at the top of the agenda, a country that does everything it can to protect its own citizens, and a country that detains and deports people that come illegally, as virtually every other country in the world does, and indeed, as we used to do.”
Reform would review the status of anyone who has been granted asylum since 2024, with those coming from countries deemed safe by the home secretary losing their permission to remain in the UK. All legal resettlement routes would also be abolished, except for those set up for Ukrainians in the wake of the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.
And the asylum system will be closed to all new applicants for five years. Those with outstanding claims will be automatically rejected.
Reform’s Zia Yusuf warned Britain will disappear without mass deportations. He confirmed a Nigel Farage government could remove more than one million people.
“If we fail to do that, if we fail to uphold the law, if we fail to say that Britain’s borders mean something … in very short order, we will not have a country at all,” said Mr Yusuf.
And Reform’s home affairs spokesman insisted he will not send anyone to their death or to face torture. He told the Daily Express: “The first thing we’ve got to acknowledge is the enormous amount of fraud that goes on inside the system, right? So, a lot of the people claiming that their life would be in danger, their lives would not be in danger.
“The vast majority of people will end up going back to their countries of origin. As I said, there will be some edge cases.
“As home secretary, I’m not going to send people back to be tortured or killed. But those are going to be very, very few people. For those people, we’re going to work with third countries to resettle them.”
Mr Yusuf admitted opponents and sections of the media will try to spin Reform’s plan. But he told the Daily Express: “The asylum system, clearly, has been a large-scale scam perpetrated against the British people. We have to take that seriously.
“The system was built for a post-World War 2 world. It’s totally unfit for purpose today – not just the scale of the fraud, but the sheer number of people now in this country who shouldn’t be.
Zia Yusuf speaks to the Daily Express (Image: Jonathan Buckmaster)
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“We’ve already got north of a million people illegally in this country who we are going to need to deport. We don’t want to make that problem even worse.
“We’re just being really honest with the British people about what our plan is. And I do think there is a moral obligation to be candid and clear and frank with the British people about what our plan is, so that if we’re successful and we win a mandate from the British people, we have the moral high ground.
“If you haven’t been honest with the British people about what your plan is, you won’t have that mandate, you won’t have the moral high ground to do some things that, absolutely, will be challenging to do, and you’re going to need to take the public with you.”
And housing officers, food safety investigators, environmental health teams and trading standards will help immigration officials by checking whether foreign nationals living in the UK are here legally.
Outlining the proposals, Mr Yusuf told this newspaper: “If you go through life in Britain, there’s already a lot of regulatory inspections that happen. We will point every organ of state at ensuring that people who break the law in this country are caught and held to account. And immigration law will be no exception.
“So, when trading standards are visiting a premise, they will check whether the workers have the right to work there, for example. We will do that on something called a strict liability basis. And what that means is the prosecutor does not need to prove intent.”
Asked if employees may be concerned about the huge expansion of their roles, Reform’s home affairs spokesman said: “I’m not too concerned about the quote ‘comfort level’ of government employees who are asked to uphold the law. There are some great people who work at the Home Office – I know some of them. There are also some people who are, frankly, far-Left, open-borders activists literally working inside the Home Office.
“If they don’t like it, they still need to do that job. And if they don’t do the job of ensuring these people are marked for deportation and we ensure that they’re removed from our country, they will be fired for gross misconduct, and they won’t receive any notice pay.
“It’s actually morally far worse because these people are paid from the taxes from nurses, from teachers, from people who go to work every day and work hard. So I think it’s actually morally repugnant for civil servants to say, ‘we’re not going to do that thing’.”
And Reform’s home affairs spokesman slammed the Home Office’s accommodation providers for effectively fuelling a housing crisis by bidding against families who need the homes.
Nigel Farage warned of a national security emergency (Image: Victoria Jones/Shutterstock)
He said: “There’s a 29-year-old teaching assistant who’s trying to move out of her parents’ home, her childhood home, at the age of 29. She’s struggling to do that. Every time she tries to bid on a flat that comes up near her child’s school, she gets outbid. And it’s suddenly off the market again.
“What she didn’t realise was that her own government, via a government contractor, was outbidding her on terms that she could never compete with.
“It’s insane. With her own tax money. And that’s when we talk about betrayal, a colossal betrayal. That’s what it is. And then we wonder why, as I said, we have such a high proportion – a third of young adults aged 19-30, still living at home with their parents. And this is one of the key reasons why.”
Reform has vowed to deploy the Royal Navy in the Channel to intercept every small boat crossing. Royal Marines will also be authorised to use lethal force and take migrants back to France. But former paratrooper Major Andrew Fox warned that some elite troops will refuse to open fire.
Mr Yusuf dismissed this and outlined the party’s position. He said: “Our armed forces will be authorised to use lethal force where necessary to protect innocent life, where, for example, if a people smuggler is armed. We know agents operating at the behest of the Iranian regime are using the English Channel and using boats like this to come to our country.
“In that scenario, our position is our armed forces will be authorised, if necessary, to protect innocent life. It would be foolish, and you would put our own boys in harm’s way, if you did not take into account the evil of some of the people coming across – again, not everybody.
“But fundamentally, it is a humanitarian mission. We’ll be ready for anything.”
Reform UK Reveals Rules on When Military Could Use ‘Lethal Force’ Against Small Boats
Reform UK’s plans to deploy the military against small-boat crossings in the English Channel have triggered a fierce political debate after controversial comments about when troops could use lethal force against migrant vessels.
The dispute has placed Nigel Farage’s immigration strategy under renewed scrutiny, raising difficult questions about border security, military responsibility, maritime safety and the legal limits on the use of force.
Reform’s wider proposal, known as Operation Fortress, would place the Royal Navy at the centre of an operation to intercept small boats and return those aboard to France or Belgium. The party says the plan would strengthen border enforcement and prevent unauthorised crossings. However, its proposals have encountered questions about their practical feasibility, international law and the risks to people travelling in overcrowded inflatable boats. <Cite refs={[“turn101710search5″,”turn101710search7″,”turn101710search4”]}/>
The controversy over lethal force is particularly serious because stopping a boat, rescuing people in distress and using potentially deadly force are fundamentally different actions. The rules governing each must be clearly understood before any operation is put into practice.
What Has Reform Said About Lethal Force?
The latest dispute followed comments by Reform MP Robert Jenrick suggesting that Royal Marines should be permitted to use lethal force against small boats in certain circumstances. The remarks prompted criticism from government figures, including Defence Readiness Minister Luke Pollard, who described the proposal as unacceptable and questioned its legality. <Cite refs={[“turn101710search2″,”turn101710news9”]}/>
Farage subsequently denied that a Reform government would authorise troops to shoot at migrant boats simply because they were attempting to cross the Channel. His position was that lethal force would be limited to self-defence if military personnel were attacked.
Reform chairman Zia Yusuf also sought to clarify the party’s position, saying force would be used to protect innocent lives in the face of threats involving criminal gangs and people smugglers. These explanations followed the backlash over the earlier remarks and highlighted the need for a clear distinction between enforcing border policy and responding to an immediate threat to life. <Cite refs={[“turn101710search2”]}/>
That distinction is essential. A policy to intercept boats does not, by itself, establish permission to use lethal force against their occupants. Nor should a political statement about a possible emergency be confused with a detailed, legally approved set of military rules.
The central question is what circumstances would justify force, how those circumstances would be assessed and what safeguards would prevent a dangerous situation from escalating unnecessarily.