Asked if his plan would apply to women and girls, as well as unaccompanied children, Mr Farage confirmed they would be thrown in detention centres with everyone else
Nigel Farage has committed to locking up women and children under his plans to tackle illegal migration.
The Clacton MP launched Reform UK’s “operation restoring justice”, which the party is billing as a five-year emergency programme to detain and deport illegal migrants and deter future arrivals that they would enact if elected to government. His party says this will include £2.5 billion detention centres, capable of holding 24,000 people.
Asked if his plan would apply to women and girls, as well as unaccompanied children, Mr Farage confirmed they would be thrown in with everyone else. He said: “Yes women and children, everyone on arrival will be detained. I have already accepted that how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue, but the people protesting outside the Bell Hotel, and at 30 migrant hotels around the country on Saturday were not doing it because of a few children coming.
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“They were doing it because over three quarters of those that come are young undocumented males who come from cultures that are entirely different from ours, who are very unlikely to assimilate into our community, who pose a risk to women and girls, and some of them, I’m afraid, pose a risk to national security. So it’s pretty clear, I think, what our priorities are.”
Around 31,000 women and girls claimed asylum in the UK in the year up to June 2025. Deporting women and young girls back to countries like Iran, Afghanistan and Sudan, could see them face repression or rape as a systematic weapon of war.
Last year, there were more than 5,100 asylum-seeking women and girls who have been identified as victims of modern slavery – usually brought to the UK against their will, with a quarter of them aged 17 or under. They were all forced to work without pay in terrible conditions, and many of them were raped on a daily basis in brothels.
Asked about people facing persecution or being tortured upon being deported, Mr Farage insisted it would be an “exercise in common sense”.
Responding, Enver Solomon, Chief Executive of the Refugee Council, said: “Detaining all women and children who come to Britain seeking safety is not only deeply concerning, it’s completely unworkable. We rightly have long-standing safeguarding protections for children in this country, and suspending these frameworks would have serious legal, diplomatic, and moral consequences. Even if we set all of this aside and spent billions on detention, there’s no practical way to return people to countries where there are no agreements in place.
“There’s a better way. Increasing the speed and accuracy with which we process asylum applications would mean we no longer have thousands of people stuck in hotels waiting for their cases to be heard. Instead, those found to be refugees could move into proper housing, start work or training, and begin contributing to their communities, while those with no right to stay can be returned with dignity. This is common-sense reform that is fair, compassionate and reflects the best of Britain.”
Kolbassia Haoussou, from charity Freedom from Torture, said: “This is not who we are as a country. Men, women and children are coming to the UK looking for safety. They are fleeing the unimaginable horrors of torture in places like Afghanistan, Sudan and Iran. And they desperately need our protection.”
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