The Home Office does not have the resources to deliver Nigel Farage’s promise of deporting half a million illegal migrants in the first parliament of a Reform UK Government, insiders have told GB News.
Mr Farage’s party has vowed to identify, detain and remove up to 600,000 asylum seekers from Britain within five years, in what has been billed as the most radical immigration overhaul in modern British political history.
Unveiling his “Operation Restoring Justice” last year, Mr Farage said a Reform UK Government would turn disused military bases into detention centres to hold around 24,000 people at a time, strike “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, and “scale up” deportation charter flights to five a day.
He also promised to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), create a British Bill of Rights to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes, and enforce lifetime re-entry bans to “secure our borders”.
But sources with knowledge of Reform UK’s thinking have questioned whether the Home Office — which is also responsible for policing, counter-terrorism and civil registrations — is capable of bringing Mr Farage’s vision to life.
Last week, Home Secretary Shabanna Mahmood announced 60,000 people were removed from the UK since Sir Keir Starmer became Prime Minister in July 2024 – the highest figure in a decade.
Reform UK — which is currently on course to win an outright majority at the next general election — wishes to deport an average of 60,000 illegals every six months.
“I think it’s a great idea to look for those who have no permission to be here,” Alp Mehmet, chairman of the Migration Watch think-tank, told GB News. “If the right resources are devoted to the task, and the necessary legislative changes are brought about, it is possible.”
The Reform UK leader has vowed to identify, detain and remove up to 600,000 asylum seekers
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However, Mr Farage has been urged to hire civil servants to deal with the increased workload of deporting large numbers of people.
As of March 2024, the Home Office employs more than 50,000 people across the four nations and overseas.
The workforce grew by nearly 8,000 staff from the previous year, driven largely by increased hiring in agencies such as the Border Force, Immigration Enforcement and Border Security Command.
Despite this recruitment drive, Chancellor Rachel Reeves instructed Government departments, including the Home Office, to reduce running costs by a sixth.
The ISU described the current working conditions for those tackling the migrant crisis as ‘extremely challenging’
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The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated administrative headcount will need to fall by 18 per cent to deliver these savings.
Among the roles at risk are those responsible for managing visa applications, updating immigration databases, and providing frontline support for legal migration.
Moreover, the Home Office is at risk of a £490million real-term shortfall over the next three years in the wake of last year’s spending review, House of Commons Library analysis commissioned by the Liberal Democrats revealed, which may result in further job cuts.
Lucy Moreton, the former general secretary of the Immigration Service Union (ISU), described the current working conditions for those tackling the migrant crisis as “extremely challenging”.
She said morale in the Home Office is “very low”, with reports of staff routinely working shifts of 14 hours or more.
Ms Moreton said the Home Office must embark on a hiring spree if Reform UK’s “idealistic” arrangements are to work.
It is understood converting abandoned military bases into immigration detention facilities will require employing contractors and specialised security personnel.
According to the BBC, deporting 6,000 people per week would require an average of 1.7 escorting officers per individual removed — far in excess of what any Government has ever achieved.
Ms Moreton, who was chief immigration officer at the now-defunct UK Immigration Service (UKIS) under Sir Tony Blair, told the People’s Channel: “Anything is possible if you throw enough money at it.
“You would need a combination of more enforcement staff and caseworkers. It’s an 18-month minimum training programme to get them sort of fully up to scratch and independently deployable.”
She added: “They’ve lost out very badly in the spending review. And that’s why they can’t afford the headcount budget. And the need to do more with less, it is incredibly wearing.”
Mr Farage said his asylum reforms would cost about £10billion over five years, but would save Whitehall money it spends on taxpayer-funded migrant hotels and other costs.
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Meanwhile, the Conservatives are pledging to replace Immigration Enforcement (IE) with a £1.6billion “removals force” — which is modelled on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency — to deport 150,000 individuals a year
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: “There are over 20,000 dangerous foreign criminals roaming the streets following release from prison and the Government is failing to deport them. This is a disgrace and a danger to the public.
“Only the Conservatives have a properly thought-out plan to fix this: create a new Removals Force with a budget doubled to £1.6billion a year and a mission to deport 150,000 illegal immigrants and foreign criminals every single year. And by pulling out of the ECHR, we can stop the endless legal appeals and just kick illegal immigrants and foreign criminals straight out of the country.”
But John Vine, the former chief inspector of borders and immigration, has called on Reform and the Tories to be bolder and appeared to propose a new Ministry of Migration to help reach these targets.
John Vine was the chief inspector of borders and immigration at the Home Office
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GB NEWSHe told Britain’s News Channel: “If the new Government were to come in, and were to focus on immigration, it may want to consider looking at whether the structures are fit for purpose. They may want to consider whether it might bring more focus to this issue if there were a separate department responsible for it.”
Mr Vine added: “If the plans are to happen, they’re going to have to go way beyond the number of people who will return voluntarily. And they’ll need the staff to process the forced returns… without some considerable expansion of resources, I think those things aren’t realistic.”
Roberta Haslam, a partner at law firm Bindmans LLP, claimed Mr Farage’s pledge was “unworkable” as the cost would be “astronomical”.
“The abandoned Rwanda plan shows how difficult these arrangements can be,” she told CNN, referring to the previous Tory administration’s deportation deal with the East African nation unanimously ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in 2023.
In response, Reform UK MP Danny Kruger said: “It’s lack of political will rather than lack of civil servants which is to blame for the Home Office’s woeful rate of deportations.
“If anyone there felt unable to work under a Reform UK Government, they should hand in their resignations immediately. We are in the midst of an illegal immigration crisis and Reform UK ministers will dismiss anyone found to be dragging their feet.”
Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s Head of Policy, said “the Home Office has not been fit for purpose for decades and Reform UK’s fully funded plan to deport illegal immigrants — Operation Restoring Justice — accounts for this fact”.
He added: “We will establish a new enforcement unit called UK Deportation Command with the legal powers, resources and thousands of new personnel necessary to implement our plan. Our plan accounts for the fact that Border Force has insufficient resources to deport those with no right to be here, a situation which is getting worse with Labour’s budget cuts.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “Nearly 60,000 illegal migrants and foreign criminals have been removed or deported since the Government took office — the largest number in over a decade.
“Enforced removals of illegal migrants are up 45 per cent, and deportations of foreign national offenders have risen by a third.
“This sits alongside a surge in operational activity, with record levels of enforcement — over 12,800 raids and 9,000 arrests last year alone. While we expand detention capacity and end the use of costly asylum hotels.
“Despite these record‑breaking figures, the Home Secretary has pledged to go further. New reforms will restore order and control to our border, removing the incentives which draw people to the UK illegally and increasing removals of those with no right to be on British soil.”