Nigel Farage has announced that Reform UK will try to expel all foreign prisoners from British prisons if it comes to power, even through agreements for them to serve their sentences in third countries like El Salvador or Kosovo when they cannot be sent back to their home states.
The proposal is part of a new package of prison policy presented this Monday by the leader of Reform UK under the pressure that the prison system of England and Wales is under. The party itself claims that foreign prisoners could serve their sentences in their country or be transferred to prisons in states willing to accept them.
El Salvador, among the countries chosen by Farage
Farage has explicitly cited El Salvador and Kosovo as possible destinations. Reform UK proposes renting prison spaces abroad for those criminals whose deportation to their country of nationality is not viable.
"Housing a foreign criminal in El Salvador will cost half as much as housing a foreign criminal in this country," Farage defended during the presentation of the proposal.
The party has initiated contacts to study the viability of the model and intends to send a delegation to El Salvador, according to coverage from several British media. The proposal takes as a reference the agreements used by other governments to transfer prisoners or deportees to Salvadoran prisons.
More than 10,000 foreigners in British prisons
The most recent official data from the Ministry of Justice counted 10,487 foreign citizens imprisoned in England and Wales as of March 31, 2026, equivalent to 12% of the prison population. Of them, 6,458 were serving sentences, 3,588 were in preventive detention, and another 441 were detained for non-criminal reasons.
The most prevalent foreign nationalities were Albanian, Irish, Polish, Romanian, and Indian. The total number of prisons in England and Wales housed 85,858 people at the end of June, according to the latest quarterly statistics.
The figure allows for nuance in the Reform UK proposal: not all of the approximately 10,000 imprisoned foreigners are convicts who can be immediately deported. Some of them remain in preventive detention and each case is subject to applicable immigration, criminal, and human rights legislation.
The Government has already tightened deportations
The expulsion of foreign criminals is not a new policy in the United Kingdom. The British Government already allows the deportation of certain convicted individuals and has been expanding the mechanisms to expedite their departure from the country in recent years.
The reforms promoted by the Executive allow for the consideration of the expulsion of foreign individuals convicted of certain sentences and facilitate that some may be transferred before completing their sentence in a British prison. In the year ending in December 2025, 5,634 returns of foreign criminals were recorded, according to the Home Office.
The difference in Farage's proposal lies in the possibility of sending prisoners to a third country to continue their sentence there, instead of merely returning them to their country of nationality.
Reform UK also promises new prisons
Farage's plan is part of a broader strategy to increase prison capacity. Reform UK proposes to build temporary centers called "Nightingale prisons," with thousands of new places, and to tighten the conditions for accessing early release.
The party presents the measures as a response to the saturation of the prison system and argues that freeing up spaces occupied by foreigners would allow for violent criminals to be incarcerated for longer periods.
The proposal would, however, have to overcome legal and diplomatic obstacles, in addition to requiring specific agreements with the receiving countries. Experts consulted by the Financial Times warn that the United Kingdom cannot unilaterally transfer a prisoner to another state and that each agreement would have to respect British legal obligations.
Criticism of Salvadoran prisons
The choice of El Salvador has provoked criticism from human rights organizations. Amnesty International has denounced abuses committed within the Salvadoran prison system and has questioned whether the United Kingdom can outsource the enforcement of sentences there while respecting its international obligations.
Farage has rejected the notion that these objections make the project unfeasible and argues that a potential Reform UK government would negotiate directly with the interested states.
For now, it is an electoral proposal from Reform UK. There is no announced agreement between the United Kingdom and El Salvador to receive British foreign prisoners nor a mechanism that allows for these transfers to be carried out immediately.