Reform pledges 400,000 deportations

In the latest instalment of Reform’s performative posturing on immigration, the far-right populist party has pledged to review all asylum claims from the last five years. They’re claiming that a Reform government would deport anyone who claimed asylum after arriving in the UK on a visa.

We’ll leave aside for a moment the absolutely dire racism and xenophobia of any Reform ‘promise’. That’s basically a given at this point.

Rather, this proposal is bloody ridiculous on a purely practical level – and it illustrates one of the many (many) massive problems with these authoritarian jerks.

Time and again, Reform have showed that it can’t handle even the basics of public finance. Now, they’ve come out with a completely un-costed, eye-wateringly complex pledge that would break the immigration system.

A further 400,000 imaginary deportations from Reform

Under Reform’s latest ridiculous proposal, around 400,000 would be eligible for deportation. According to the BBC’s reporting, the reviews would target anyone who has asylum status, has overstayed a visa, or is from “a country deemed safe by a Reform-led government”.

This would be on top of the 600,000 deportations over 5 years that Reform previously pledged. The majority of this figure would be made up of people who arrived on small boats – a crisis which was itself caused by Nigel Farage and the other Leavers’ half-baked Brexit.

In order to carry out its draconian immigrant bashing, Reform have stated that they would withdraw the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

To be clear, the ECHR does very little to prevent any member state from deporting people, except in exceptional circumstances like a risk of torture. However, what the ECHR does do is protect our basic human rights, including the right to life, freedom of thought, and ability to vote – which shows where Reform’s priorities lie.

Zia Yusuf

In a typically rambling Twitter post, Zia Yusuf laid out some further ‘details’ of his party’s proposals. Yusuf calls himself the ‘shadow home secretary’, although Reform is 108 seats short of granting him that particular title.

Given that he doesn’t even know his own job, it’s unsurprising that the announcement was similarly half-baked:

Anyone who broke into the country illegally, or came in on a visa and overstayed to claim asylum (which is almost all of them) will have their status revoked and be deported.

This is an addition to all those currently in Britain illegally.

For years now, Britain has been suffering from a real-time invasion.

We barely even know where to start with this one. There’s the “broke in” phrasing, as though Dover has fucking double-glazing all round it. “Real-time invasion” also gets an honorable mention – as opposed to what exactly?

Then there’s the threat to remove anyone who arrived illegally, in addition to “all those currently in Britain illegally.” That’s typical Reform-brand efficiency for you.

Yusuf also stated that Reform would follow the US example of building “modular” detention facilities to hold 22,500 people before deportation. To be clear, the US facilities are concentration camps in all but name.

As of the most recent data from mid-2024, the UK’s immigration detention capacity stood at around 2,200 spaces. Even then, the government has been forced to use spaces like hotels, which weren’t built for purpose.

Reform, however, believes it can expand that capacity by ten times within 18 months. This is the same party that can’t even manage the logistics of local government, or their own tax returns.

The asylum caseload

Context is important here. Reform are proposing to review thousands of asylum cases, when the review system itself is well past breaking point.

For example, Labour recently stated that it would review asylum seekers’ status once every 30 months. Like Reform, they also stated that this would apply retrospectively for the last 5 years. However, research from the Refugee Council stated that this would be “unworkable and extremely costly”:

the Home Office would be required to conduct between 1.66 million and 1.9 million reviews of refugee status over the first decade. This would result in a total cost of between £1.1 billion and £1.27 billion, depending on how many people lose their protection at review.

The backlog of asylum cases has quadrupled since 2014. The most recent figures from December 2025 show that 48,700 people were still waiting for an initial decision. Likewise, a March 2026 government briefing stated that:

As of June 2024, the total ‘work in progress’ asylum caseload, which includes cases awaiting an appeal outcome and unsuccessful applicants subject to removal from the UK, consisted of 224,700 cases. Of these, 39% of cases were awaiting an initial decision and 61% had received an initial refusal and were awaiting some kind of further action.

In part, this is because applicants are waiting longer for an initial decision on their case. However, the UK government has also stated that the number of ‘removal actions’ (deportations) is also causing the number to spike.

‘Impractical farce’ from Reform

Given this dire context, it’s no wonder that the Lib Dems have already branded Reform’s pledge an “impractical farce”. Even the Tories called it a copy of their own policy “but without the detail”. For once, we’ve got to agree there – same racism, but with even less pretense to basic basic financial literacy.

Reform’s naked racism, xenophobia and bigotry is reason enough to dismiss any of their posturing immigration policies.

However, with the relentless focus on the fact that they’re a party of bottom-feeding scum, it’s easy to overlook the fact that they’re also pathetic failures of politicians who couldn’t even run a fucking church fête.

Any reporting which fails to ask Reform ‘How do you plan to pay for this rubbish?’ is collusion, at this point.

Featured image via the Canary