Spain turned back 53,000 migrants in two days whilst Britain’s returns deal has managed 921
Reform UK has pledged to use the Royal Navy to intercept every migrant boat in the Channel and return it to France or Belgium. The announcement came after more than 60,000 migrants crossed from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Thursday and Friday.
By Saturday night, Spanish authorities had sent roughly 53,000 of them back across the border. Reform said the events in North Africa showed the ‘urgency’ of its plan for Britain.
What Operation Fortress would do
Under the plan, the Navy would intercept any unauthorised boat and detain its occupants. They would be given water, food, and a medical assessment, then returned under escort on Navy vessels.
Reform said it would set up a joint military command drawing on the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, RAF, and Army. A separate surveillance command would track incoming boats. The party said it would pass emergency legislation ‘as necessary’ to give the joint command further powers.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s home affairs spokesman, said: ‘Britain is being invaded. Tory and Labour governments responded with a free ferry service and free hotels. Reform UK will respond by launching the largest military operation in the English Channel since World War Two.’
The party, led by Nigel Farage, insists the plan complies with international law. It has not published any legal analysis showing how the scheme would work alongside international maritime law or the European Convention on Human Rights.
The numbers behind the comparison
Spain returned tens of thousands of migrants to Morocco within hours of their arrival in Ceuta. It could do so because of a 2015 law that allows the expulsion of migrants arriving in Ceuta or Melilla without letting them file an asylum claim. Human rights groups have criticised these ‘hot returns’ for lacking any individual assessment.
Britain’s record stands in sharp contrast. Under the ‘one in, one out’ agreement with France, around 921 small-boat migrants had been returned as of June. Over the same period, Britain accepted around 896 asylum seekers from France under the reciprocal arrangement.
Clashes continued in Ceuta on Sunday.
Home Secretary says the Channel is ’trickier’
Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, said Spain’s approach would not work for Britain. ‘I think what we’ve seen in Ceuta is unique to those particular circumstances’, she told The Telegraph.
‘Morocco and Spain share a land border, and therefore they have an agreement between each other, which is about sharing a land border’, she said. She added that a people-smuggling trade crossing both French and English waters makes the work ‘different and trickier in many ways’.
Britain is being invaded. Tory and Labour governments responded with a free ferry service and free hotels
What Burnham says about the crossings
Some 2,000 migrants have crossed the Channel in small boats since Andy Burnham replaced Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister on 20 July. Burnham said on Sunday he would be ‘relentless’ in tackling the crossings and claimed ‘progress is being made’.
Provisional Home Office figures show arrivals this year running lower than the same period in 2025, though crossings continue in the thousands each month.
No British government has adopted a military interception and return model. Reform says Operation Fortress will remain its flagship immigration policy.
