Zia Yusuf will today unveil sweeping proposals to stop small boat Channel crossings (Image: Getty)
Zia Yusuf will today unveil sweeping proposals to stop small boat Channel crossings, destroy knife crime gangs and root out Islamist extremism as Reform UK’s new home affairs spokesman.
The party figure is expected to describe immigration as a “national security emergency” when he addresses supporters in Dover , Kent on Monday.
Both major parties have been “turning the other way while the fabric of our society has been under assault”, he will claim.
British Ice-style agency to remove 300,000 annually
Central to his vision is creating a domestic version of America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the polarising US agency known as Ice.
A new UK Deportation Command would be capable of holding 24,000 illegal migrants at any one time while processing removals of nearly 300,000 people every year.
Former military installations would serve as temporary detention centres before deportation flights leave the country. The party estimates these converted bases could be operational for 24,000 detainees within a year and a half, requiring £2.5 billion investment.
Daily deportation flights would reach five under the proposals.
Mr Yusuf said: “As a result of our mass deportation programme, a Reform government will deliver net negative immigration.”
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Indefinite Leave to Remain scrapped
According to The Sun, further measures on the table include scrapping Indefinite Leave to Remain status entirely, cutting off welfare benefits for foreign nationals and freezing visa issuance to countries that won’t accept their own citizens back.
Tackling extremism would see the Muslim Brotherhood outlawed and the Prevent counter-terror scheme overhauled to address “real threats.”
Mr Yusuf will commit to “protect Britain’s Christian heritage” and block the conversion of churches into mosques.
Turning to law enforcement, he will insist police must stop producing TikTok content and driving Pride-emblazoned cars, focusing instead on arresting offenders.
Stronger stop and search legislation combined with intensive neighbourhood patrols would form the response to Britain’s knife crime epidemic.
He will also announce prison construction on an unprecedented scale — building new facilities at the “fastest rate of our lifetimes.”
Three nations face visa freeze threat
Countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria would face British visa bans unless they cooperate with deportation requests, The Times has reported.
Shabana Mahmood threatened similar action against Angola, Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo in November as part of Labour’s drive against illegal migration — warning those governments the UK would deny entry to their nationals without better cooperation on returns.
Culture wars and extremism dominate agenda
All three have now come to the table, but Yusuf will accuse Labour of threatening visa bans on only a “handful of African countries responsible for only a minuscule proportion of illegal migrants”.
Nations with significantly higher illegal migrant numbers — Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan and Sudan — would become Reform’s targets instead, he will argue.
Official statistics show Pakistani nationals feature prominently among visa overstayers.
Before his speech, Yusuf said on Saturday: “As home secretary I will use every instrument of state to deport all illegal migrants in Britain, including visa bans on countries that refuse to take back their illegals.
“Further countries will be announced soon. Reform will do what it takes to finally secure our borders, uphold the rule of law and put the British people first.”
Today’s speech will introduce additional policies covering what Reform frames as “protecting British culture” while adopting a “zero-tolerance” position on Islamist extremism — building on the party’s recent pledge to ban the Muslim Brotherhood.
Labour yesterday said Britain was a “proud, tolerant and diverse nation” which stood in opposition to the “divisive politics stoked by Reform.”
Zia Yusuf Pledges British Version of Trump’s ICE to ‘Deliver Net Negative Immigration’
Reform UK has put immigration enforcement at the centre of its plans for government, with Zia Yusuf pledging to create a new UK Deportation Command capable of tracking down, detaining and removing people who have no legal right to remain in Britain.
The proposal has repeatedly been compared with Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, in the United States. Reform’s own language and the scale of its proposed operation have encouraged that comparison, although Yusuf has rejected the idea that his proposed British organisation would simply copy the American agency.
The policy is part of a wider Reform programme aimed at achieving what the party calls “net negative immigration” through a combination of deportations, tighter visa rules, changes to asylum policy and measures intended to encourage people without legal status to leave voluntarily.
Under the plan announced by Yusuf in February, the proposed UK Deportation Command would have capacity to detain 24,000 migrants at a time and deport as many as 288,000 people a year, with Reform proposing five deportation flights every day.
That would represent a major expansion of Britain’s existing immigration-enforcement infrastructure.
What is the UK Deportation Command?
The central proposal is the creation of a dedicated agency responsible for identifying people who Reform says are in Britain illegally, detaining them and arranging their removal.
Reform says the organisation would operate alongside wider changes to immigration law.
The party has proposed leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act and changing the legal framework governing deportations. Yusuf has argued that existing legal and administrative arrangements make it too difficult for governments to enforce removal decisions.
The proposed agency would therefore not simply involve hiring more immigration officers.
It would form part of a much broader restructuring of the system.
Reform’s plans envisage expanded detention facilities, additional deportation flights and new arrangements with countries that refuse to accept the return of their nationals.
The Independent reported that Reform’s proposal would give the new organisation capacity to detain 24,000 people simultaneously and deport up to 288,000 annually.
That figure is a proposed capacity rather than a record of actual removals.
Why the comparison with Trump’s ICE?
The comparison with ICE is difficult to avoid because Reform itself has described the proposed agency in terms that closely resemble the American model.
ICE is responsible for immigration enforcement and removals in the United States and has become one of the most controversial institutions associated with Trump’s immigration policies.
Reform’s proposed UK Deportation Command would similarly focus on immigration enforcement, detention and deportation.
However, Yusuf has explicitly rejected the suggestion that Reform wants to create a literal British copy of ICE.
Speaking after the announcement, he said comparisons were understandable but argued that the British organisation would operate under different circumstances. He also said the UK Deportation Command would not carry weapons.
Yusuf’s position is therefore more nuanced than the “British ICE” label suggests.
The proposed function is similar in one important respect — concentrating immigration enforcement and deportation powers within a dedicated organisation — but Reform says the institutional model would be adapted to the British legal and policing environment.
The 288,000 target
The scale of the proposed operation is one of its most controversial elements.
A target of 288,000 deportations a year would mean removing approximately 5,500 people every week.
Five deportation flights every day would require an extensive logistical operation involving aircraft, detention centres, escorts, immigration officers, administrative staff and receiving countries.
Reform argues that the existing system has failed to remove people who have no legal right to remain.
Its proposed solution is to build an enforcement system capable of operating on a substantially larger scale.
But the practical question is whether such capacity could actually be created.
The Guardian reported that Reform’s proposal would be dramatically larger than Britain’s existing detention estate, which had approximately 2,500 detention spaces in April 2024.
Expanding from that level to a system capable of detaining 24,000 people would require major investment in infrastructure and personnel.
Reform’s ambition for “net negative immigration”
The deportation command is not intended to operate in isolation.
Reform’s wider objective is to achieve what it describes as “net negative immigration”.
The party has argued that Britain should not merely reduce net migration but should reach a situation in which more people leave the country than enter it.
A February report by the Straits Times said Reform’s programme envisaged around 600,000 people being returned over a five-year parliamentary term as part of its net-negative immigration objective.
The strategy combines several elements.
First, Reform wants to deport people who are in Britain illegally.
Second, it wants to make it harder for people to enter Britain through what it regards as uncontrolled or inappropriate migration routes.
Third, it proposes replacing indefinite leave to remain with renewable five-year work visas for many legal migrants.
Fourth, it wants to restrict welfare access for foreign nationals.
Together, these measures are intended by Reform to change the incentives surrounding migration.
Ending indefinite leave to remain
One of the most significant parts of the proposal concerns people who have entered Britain legally.
Reform has proposed abolishing indefinite leave to remain as the normal long-term immigration status and replacing it with renewable five-year work visas.
The proposal would represent a major change for migrants who currently expect to obtain permanent settlement after meeting the existing requirements.
Yusuf has argued that Britain should move away from a system in which temporary migration can eventually become permanent residence automatically through established routes.
Instead, Reform proposes a system in which permission to remain would have to be renewed.
The Independent reported that the party intended to combine the immigration reforms with new rules governing spouses and other categories of migrants.
Small boats remain a central target
The deportation strategy is also closely connected to Reform’s approach to Channel crossings.
The party has proposed Operation Fortress, under which the Royal Navy and other authorities would be used to intercept boats attempting to reach Britain illegally.
Reform says people on board would be returned rather than being allowed to continue their journey to British shores.
In September, Yusuf reiterated that Reform intended to stop the boats within the first 100 days of a future government. Reform’s own announcement said more than 200,000 people had arrived on British shores illegally over the period it highlighted and presented the issue as a central reason for its proposed emergency measures.
This creates a two-stage strategy.
Operation Fortress is designed to prevent new arrivals.
The UK Deportation Command is designed to remove people already in Britain without legal status.
Reform’s argument is that both elements are necessary if the party’s wider objective is to achieve net-negative migration.
International agreements would be essential
A major practical difficulty is that Britain cannot simply deport people to countries that refuse to receive them.
Reform has therefore proposed using diplomatic and visa pressure against countries that do not cooperate with removals.
The party has discussed visa freezes involving countries including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Syria if governments refuse to accept the return of nationals without a legal right to remain.
This would make immigration policy partly a foreign-policy issue.
The British government would need to negotiate return arrangements, establish the identities and nationalities of people being removed and secure cooperation from receiving countries.
That could become particularly complicated when governments dispute whether someone is their citizen or decline to issue travel documents.
The legal battle
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to Reform’s proposed system is the legal framework.
Yusuf has argued that courts and human-rights legislation have made deportation unnecessarily difficult.
Reform therefore proposes leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and repealing the Human Rights Act.
It has also discussed changing the role of judges in immigration cases.
The Spectator reported that Yusuf wanted legislation establishing a legal obligation on the Home Secretary to deport people who are in Britain illegally and argued that judges should not be able to prevent legitimate deportation flights from leaving.
Such proposals would represent a major constitutional change.
Judicial review and court oversight are longstanding features of Britain’s constitutional system. Any attempt to reduce that oversight would therefore generate substantial legal and political debate.
Farage’s interest in Trump’s immigration team
The comparison with America has gained another dimension in September.
Nigel Farage recently said he wanted to “hijack” Tom Homan, Trump’s prominent immigration adviser, and bring him to Britain to help secure the country’s borders.
Farage made the remark during an event in the United States where Homan was also present.
Homan has been closely associated with Trump’s immigration enforcement strategy and previously played a major role in designing policies during Trump’s first administration.
Farage’s comments provide another indication of the influence that America’s immigration debate has had on Reform’s thinking.
They do not, however, establish that Homan would actually take a formal role in a future British government.
The remark was political rhetoric rather than an announced appointment.
Critics raise questions about scale and consequences
Reform’s proposals have attracted criticism from opposition parties, legal experts and migrant-rights organisations.
Critics have questioned whether the detention and deportation system could be built at the speed and scale envisaged by Reform.
There are also concerns about the effects of ending existing immigration statuses and reducing judicial oversight.
The Independent reported that Amnesty International UK accused Reform of using migrants as justification for mass deportations and expanded surveillance, while Labour criticised the proposals as divisive.
Reform rejects those criticisms and argues that the existing system has failed to enforce immigration rules effectively.
The disagreement is therefore not simply about whether deportations should occur.
It concerns the scale of enforcement, the powers given to government, the role of courts, the treatment of people who have established lives in Britain and the balance between immigration control and individual legal protections.
A fundamentally different immigration model
If implemented in full, Reform’s proposals would produce a significantly different immigration system from the one currently operating in Britain.
The proposed changes would affect both illegal and legal migration.
For people without legal status, the message would be that deportation enforcement would become considerably more extensive.
For legal migrants, the abolition of indefinite leave to remain would create a different pathway towards long-term residence.
For asylum seekers arriving through irregular routes, Reform proposes much tougher restrictions.
And for employers and public services, the party’s immigration policies could change the supply of overseas workers.
The economic implications are therefore wider than the deportation programme itself.
What happens if Reform enters government?
The UK Deportation Command remains a Reform UK proposal rather than an existing government institution.
Turning the plan into reality would require legislation, funding, recruitment, new detention capacity, international agreements and changes to Britain’s legal framework.
The proposed annual capacity of 288,000 removals is therefore best understood as a target or intended operational capacity, not a forecast of guaranteed deportations.
Yusuf has nevertheless made clear that Reform considers immigration enforcement one of the defining tests of a future government.
Farage has reinforced that position, including through his recent public praise for and interest in Trump’s immigration enforcement model.
The political significance of the proposal is therefore clear even before any legislation is drafted.
Reform UK is attempting to move the immigration debate beyond promises to “control the borders” and towards a detailed institutional programme involving a new deportation command, expanded detention, daily removal flights, changes to settlement rules and restrictions on judicial intervention.
Whether such a programme could operate as proposed would depend on decisions by Parliament, the courts, civil servants and foreign governments.
But the objective is unambiguous: Reform wants immigration enforcement to become a central function of government and says its ultimate goal is not merely lower immigration, but net negative immigration.
The proposed UK Deportation Command is the mechanism at the heart of that ambition — a British immigration-enforcement agency designed on a scale that would represent a substantial departure from the current system, even as its architects insist it should not simply be regarded as Britain’s version of Trump’s ICE.