Reform UK wants to build a British version of Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. They are calling it the UK Deportation Command, and they say it will deport up to 288,000 people a year. The evidence from the US shows what that kind of operation looks like in practice.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, unveiled plans for the Deportation Command at Dover in February 2026. He said the body would operate under a new “Illegal Migration Mass Deportation Act” designed to compel removals and limit the role of the courts. Reuters
The plan, branded “Operation Restoring Justice,” sets out to detain and deport up to 600,000 people over one parliament. To make that possible, Reform would leave the European Convention on Human Rights, repeal the Human Rights Act, and suspend the Refugee Convention for five years. Ox Detention capacity would be expanded from around 2,200 spaces today to 24,000 within 18 months, using repurposed military sites.
Yusuf used the word “invaded” to describe the UK’s migration situation and said he would “end and indeed reverse this invasion” as home secretary. Nation.Cymru
Multiple news organisations, including Reuters, described the Deportation Command as a British version of ICE. Yusuf pushed back, saying it was “not true” that the UK version would face the same problems as Trump’s programme, pointing to differences in firearms culture and policing by consent. ITV Meridian
The distinction he is drawing is cosmetic. The operational model is identical: agency officers would track down, locate, detain, and deport undocumented migrants across the country, with up to five deportation flights daily and migrants housed in modular facilities while awaiting removal.
What Yusuf does not address is what ICE’s record actually looks like when it operates at scale.
Since Trump expanded ICE’s mandate in 2025, the results have been documented in detail. The number of people held in ICE detention rose nearly 75% across 2025, from around 40,000 at the start of the year to 66,000 by December, the highest level ever recorded. By November, for every person released from custody, more than fourteen were deported directly from detention. American Immigration Council
2025 was the deadliest year for ICE detention on record. Facilities saw significant overcrowding, worsening medical care, growing complaints of abusive conditions, and documented violations of detention standards. People were “disappearing” for days as ICE’s detainee locator system became unreliable. American Immigration Council
The overreach has not been limited to undocumented migrants. Since October 2025, more than 400 federal judges have ruled at least 4,421 times that ICE is holding people illegally. In its first year, the administration’s enforcement campaign resulted in the wrongful detention of at least 170 US citizens. AILA
The UK currently carries out around 9,000 enforced returns a year. Reaching Reform’s target would require a scale of interior enforcement the country has never seen. Ox That means street-level raids, expanded detention centres, and an agency empowered to act before the courts can intervene. That is not a description of something new. It is a description of what ICE already does.
Reform wants to import a model that US federal judges have found to be operating illegally thousands of times over, in facilities where more people died last year than in the previous four years combined. Yusuf says the UK version will be different because officers will not carry weapons. That is not a safeguard. It is a talking point.