Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party will deport all illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom if it comes into power in Westminster, Zia Yusuf pledged on Monday.
Providing clarity to an issue that has dogged Reform from its supporters on the right, ex-party chairman Muhammad ‘Zia’ Yusuf told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if elected, Reform will “deport every illegal immigrant in this country”.
“I want to be crystal clear about what my position is, and Reform UK’s position is, which is we will deport everybody who is here in this country illegally, which is roughly about 1.2 million people,” he said.
The definitive declaration from Yusuf, who sensationally quit the party before returning just two days later last week, comes in contrast to the mixed messages from party leadership over the past year on the issue.
Reform boss Nigel Farage has faced frequent criticism over a 2024 interview with GB News presenter Steve Edginton in which he admitted that it was not his “ambition” to conduct mass deportations if elected prime minister.
While Mr Farage said that illegals should “not be allowed to stay”, he cautioned that deporting the estimated million-plus illegals from the country would be a “political impossibility”.
However, in April, the Brexit boss announced that if he becomes the next PM, he would create a new Minister of Deportations with the express purpose of carrying out mass deportations of illegals. Farage argued that the new department would be necessary to circumvent the deep state civil servants who have often stymied efforts to maintain border controls.
Nevertheless, the issue has remained difficult for party leadership to grapple with. In a separate interview with Steve Edgington last week, Reform deputy leader Richard Tice criticised the GB News presenter for being “obsessed” with the issue after being pressed on whether the party would commit to removing all illegals from the country.
“Our view is that you can’t be here illegally, so you’ve got to go through a removal process, but don’t be juvenile and assume you can do that overnight or in the space of a month, you can’t. And you’ve got to be grown up about this,” Tice said.
The clarification on the commitment to deport all illegals from Yusuf comes in the wake of a bombshell report from prominent Reform supporter, Professor Matt Goodwin, which predicted that people with two white British parents would become a minority in the UK by 2063 and would represent just 22.7 per cent of the population by the end of the century. The report also predicted that one in five people in the UK would be Muslims by 2100.
Commenting on the issue, Yusuf said that because he is a Muslim, he does not see Islam as a “threat to the country”, but acknowledged that there is “resentment building”, particularly in light of the “two-tier policing” in which some groups are treated differently by authorities.
“The majority of the caseload for our intelligence agencies are Islamist terrorists, I think that is important and I think that’s one of the biggest threats the country faces. I think the country has huge issues with assimilation. And the sorts of countries from which people come here and the people you’re bringing from those countries are an issue. I don’t think these are controversial statements,” he said.
While Mr Yusuf resigned last week as chairman amid a row over Reform MP Sarah Pochin’s parliamentary question to Prime Minister Starmer over whether he would consider banning the burqa in Britain, Yusuf claimed that this was not the reason for his decision, and that if he were a member of parliament, he would likely vote in favour of the ban.
According to The Times of London, Yusuf will not return as chairman of the party but will instead focus on leading Reform’s DOGE efforts in local councils and being a front-facing spokesman for the party as a “cabinet minister in waiting.”
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