By Ellis Clark

Nigel Farage spoke to the press August 29, 2025, this year and announced his parties plan to have mass deportations if Reform UK are voted in, taking inspiration from Donald Trump and his work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Zia Yusuf, Chairman of Reform UK said: “Whatever you think of president trump, he has cut illegal border crossings by 97%, they said it couldn’t be done, but he has done it”.

If Reform get in will Farage bend to the will of Donald Trump and take the UK in the direction of standing as the 51st US state?

Nigel Farage in front of a Reform UK {getty images}

During the great depression, after the Wall Street financial crash, a saying rose to popularity: “The US sneezes and the world catches a cold”. This saying is becoming truer than ever with more countries than ever becoming unsafe for immigrants due to the situation in the United States. One of which being the United Kingdom. Reform UK, led by infamous politician, Nigel Farage is a political party rapidly gaining popularity in the UK, reforms main policies focus on immigration in the United Kingdom.

Farage has been known to spew untrue rhetoric as fact in an attempt to fear monger, spread hatred and collect votes for himself and his party in the next election by promising solutions for his fabricated problems. With reform over taking parties like labour in the predicted voting polls, these views on immigration are becoming increasingly worrying for documented and undocumented migrants alike.

ICE is a government branch is the United States government that was launched in 2003 as a response to the 2001 9/11 terror attacks, the organisation was launched as an attempt at “Homeland security”. Initially ICE was allocated £9 million dollars in funding and had over 20,000 employees. Despite being launched in 2003, ICE has been in the news recently due to its increased activity during Donald Trump's presidency.

Immigration was a large part of Donald Trump's campaign. He claimed that the United States had an immigration problem and that it needed sorting out, despite there being no evidence to back this up. During Donald Trump's term there has been over 75 billion dollars allocated to ICE to cover the four years of trumps term and so far, this year there are over 60,000 people being held in immigration detention centres and over 20 deaths at the fault of ICE.

Farage recently made a speech praising the US’s immigration enforcement and ICE, and then announced, if voted in, reform UK would be creating a new hardline immigration plan called “Operation Restoring Justice” which includes the launching of a “UK Deportation Command” which would function as a national scale immigration enforcement body, this paired with the comments that Farage plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain which is how the majority of documented immigrants in the UK are allowed to stay legally creates a large concern for the safety of not only undocumented, but also documented immigrants too if reform get in.

Malcom Kennedy, from Motherwell said: “Oh I think it’s terrible, you're talking about the ICE? I think it's absolutely disgusting actually.

“I’m totally into freedom and I think people should have the have the right to live their lives”.

Denise Barkley, from Portsmouth said: "it's terrible, I think it’s about to happen here, it's frightening

“I’m first generation, my dad is polish, I was born here, he wasn’t

“It’s frightening. People are still people.”

Could the UK become the 51st US State?