What the evidence shows
The starting point is worth making clear because political arguments often obscure it:
The UK already removes substantial numbers of people.
Home Office figures recorded 39,007 returns in the year ending March 2026, up 7% on the previous year. Of those, 9,723 were enforced and 29,284 were voluntary. There were also 11,918 asylum-related returns --- the highest number in that statistical series.
More recent provisional figures show 39,690 returns in the 12 months to 31 July 2026, including 9,679 enforced returns, 12,412 asylum-related returns and 3,427 returns involving people who had arrived by small boat.
So claims that Britain simply doesn't deport or return people are wrong.
The more difficult issue is determining who can be removed and getting the removal done.
An asylum seeker is not automatically someone who should be deported
This distinction is fundamental.
An asylum seeker is someone asking Britain for protection. Their claim may ultimately succeed or fail.
If the UK concludes that somebody qualifies for refugee or other protected status, the entire point of that decision is that they cannot simply be returned to the danger from which Britain has agreed they need protection.
If their claim is refused and any applicable appeal process is exhausted, their position is different: they may then become liable for removal.
Treating both groups as though they are simply "illegal immigrants waiting to be deported" erases the legal decision that the asylum system exists to make.
Why can't Britain simply refuse to hear the claim?
Because the UK has deliberately entered into legal obligations concerning refugees and human rights.
The Refugee Convention contains the principle of non-refoulement: refugees should not be returned to territories where their life or freedom would be threatened on Convention grounds.
Other protections can also prevent removal where someone would face treatment prohibited by law.
That doesn't mean every asylum claim must be accepted. It means the government has to establish whether protection is actually owed before returning somebody to the country they say they fear.
This is why a serious returns policy requires a functioning asylum decision-making system, not simply more aircraft.
What about people whose claims have failed?
This is where criticism of the existing system becomes considerably more legitimate.
If somebody has exhausted the process and has no legal right to remain, there is a strong public-policy case for expecting the immigration system actually to enforce its decision.
The Home Office explicitly says that it seeks to return people without a legal right to stay. Its figures demonstrate that thousands are forcibly removed and many more leave voluntarily.
But even at that stage, putting someone on a plane isn't always something Britain can do unilaterally.
A deportation requires somewhere to deport somebody to
This is one of the biggest things missing from the slogan.
A government needs to establish someone's nationality and obtain the documentation necessary for them to travel and be admitted.
If somebody has no passport, their identity is disputed, their country will not recognise them as a national, or the authorities there are slow or unwilling to provide documentation, removal can become much harder.
That is one reason international returns agreements and diplomatic cooperation matter.
The effect can be seen in the statistics. The Home Office attributes part of the growth in enforced returns to agreements with other countries and specifically notes the increase in Albanian returns following the UK-Albania agreement.
In other words, effective deportation policy isn't simply about being "tough".
It also requires other governments to cooperate.
Why not detain everybody until they can be removed?
The UK does use immigration detention, particularly to facilitate enforced removals.
Around 23,000 people entered immigration detention in the year ending March 2026, and 44% of people leaving detention during that period were returned from the UK.
But indefinite mass detention isn't a magic solution either.
It requires detention capacity, staff, legal processes and substantial public expenditure --- and still doesn't produce a destination country or travel document where one isn't available.
Again, the slogan avoids the difficult policy question.
And "deportation" isn't technically the right word for everyone
Political debate often uses deport to mean almost any immigration removal.
The official system is more complicated.
Home Office statistics distinguish between enforced returns, voluntary returns, port returns and the deportation of people such as foreign national offenders.
That distinction doesn't change the underlying argument, but it is another reason apparently simple claims about the number of people Britain "deports" can be misleading.
What about foreign criminals?
Foreign nationals who commit serious crimes are another category frequently folded into the wider migration debate.
Again, the UK already removes thousands.
There were 5,858 foreign-national-offender returns in the year ending March 2026, the highest level since 2017. More than half of the foreign offenders returned in the latest available offence data had received prison sentences of at least two years.
It is perfectly legitimate to debate whether that system should operate faster or cover more people.
But foreign offenders, failed asylum seekers, people awaiting asylum decisions and recognised refugees are not interchangeable populations.
Where the slogan goes wrong
"Just deport them all" sounds decisive because it removes every difficult stage between identifying somebody and putting them on an aircraft.
But those stages are the policy problem.
A functioning system has to:
establish who the person is → determine whether they have a legal right to remain → complete the relevant legal process → obtain documentation → identify a country legally and practically able to receive them → arrange the return.
None of that means Britain is powerless.
Indeed, the latest figures show returns increasing: the provisional 12-month figure to July 2026 was 39,690, including more than 12,000 asylum-related returns.
What it means is that "just deport them all" isn't a policy. It is a slogan that skips the difficult parts of having one.
The Anti-Reform point
There is a legitimate argument for a faster, better-functioning asylum and returns system.
People whose claims are valid should receive decisions without spending years in uncertainty. People whose claims fail and who have no other right to remain should not simply disappear into an unresolved backlog.
But that requires competent government: faster decisions, effective case management, workable returns agreements, reliable identification, adequate enforcement resources and international cooperation.
The attraction of the populist answer is that none of those difficult things has to be explained.
"Just deport them all" replaces the question of how to build an effective system with the pretence that political will is the only thing missing.
The evidence says otherwise.