Could Farage's plan to mass-deport asylum seekers from the UK succeed?

The United Kingdom's Reform Party (Reform UK), led by Nigel Farage, this week unveiled plans for mass deportations of asylum seekers from the United Kingdom, which would include withdrawing from human rights treaties and cooperating with authoritarian governments to accept their citizens, Reuters reports today.

The UK's Reform Party, which currently has just four seats in parliament but is leading in most opinion polls, has said that changes to asylum laws would allow the deportation of 600.000 asylum seekers in its first five-year term if it wins the next general election, expected in 2029.

That would be one of the most radical attempts by a European country to combat illegal immigration.

Where did the figure of 600.000 come from?

Successive British governments – the Conservatives for more than a decade, and then Prime Minister Keir Starmer's Labour since July last year – have struggled for years with the question of how to resolve the status of asylum seekers who enter the country illegally.

Advocates of leaving the European Union (EU), which Britain did in 2020 after a 2016 referendum, argued that it would stop uncontrolled immigration.

It is difficult to establish exact figures on how many people live undocumented in Britain.

The UK's Reform Party claims that around one million people are in the country illegally - without specifying - hence their claim that they could try to deport up to 600.000 people, according to Reuters.

Official government figures from June 2024 showed that there were 224.742 cases in the asylum system, while it is believed that there are many more undocumented people in the country, such as those who have overstayed their work or tourist visas.

In particular, governments have failed to prevent the arrival of small boats from Europe.

Since 2018, more than 179.000 people have arrived by small boats, according to official figures, with around four percent being turned back. More than 28.000 asylum seekers have crossed the English Channel to Britain this year alone – a record number, almost 50 percent more than in the same period last year.

Which agreements would the UK have to withdraw from?

Farage and other right-wing parties and MPs have long called for Britain to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), arguing that it prevents the deportation of asylum seekers who have arrived in the country illegally, either to their home countries or to other countries.

When Britain's Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that the then-Conservative plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda was unlawful, the court's president, Robert Reid, stressed that there were other international treaties that prohibited returning asylum seekers to their home countries without a thorough consideration of their claims.

The UK Reform Party's plans would therefore require Britain not only to leave the ECHR, but also to "opt out" of the Geneva Refugee Convention, the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings, the United Nations Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

What would it mean to leave these conventions?

The most significant consequence would be an exit from the ECHR, which guarantees the provisions of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which largely ended thirty years of violence and established a model of power-sharing in Northern Ireland.

Some smaller political parties in Northern Ireland have condemned the UK's Reform Party plan as irresponsible, while American politicians - whose country helped broker the peace deal - have previously expressed concerns about possible changes to the agreement.

Farage said the peace deal could be renegotiated, but that it would take time.

Withdrawing from other conventions would put Britain in a minority on the international stage. More than 170 countries have signed conventions against torture, including the United States (US) and Russia.

Some lawyers suggest that while Britain could withdraw from international treaties, English common law protections against torture could mean that courts could still block deportations.

How radical would the policy be?

Peter Walsh, a senior fellow at the Migration Observatory at Oxford University, said that if the UK's Reform Party plans were implemented, it would be the most radical attempt by a European state in recent decades to tackle illegal immigration, as it would involve a willingness to return asylum seekers to countries where they risk torture.

When asked about the possibility that some people could be subjected to torture or persecution if returned to their countries, Farage said his main concern was what was happening on British streets, to British citizens.