Nigel Farage has pledged to remove every foreign national from prisons in England and Wales, sending those whose home countries refuse them to third states including El Salvador.
The Reform UK leader set out the plan at a press conference in London on August 10. He said housing an offender in El Salvador would cost half as much as in Britain while freeing up cells at home.
Anderson will travel to the Central American country later this year to assess the feasibility of renting places. He is to be accompanied by Vanessa Frake, a former governor of security and operations at Wormwood Scrubs prison in London who now advises Reform UK on justice.
Farage said Salvadoran jails should not be judged on the caged blocks shown on television. He also named Kosovo and the Baltic states as possible destinations.
There were 10,134 foreign nationals behind bars in England and Wales at the end of July, out of a total prison population of 85,858. That is roughly 12 per cent, a proportion broadly in line with other European countries.
Nearly a third of those inmates are on remand and have not been convicted. A Reform UK spokesman said only convicted prisoners would be eligible for transfer.
The party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf set out the policy on August 9. “We will deport all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons,” he said.
Reform UK would also create 12,000 places in temporary “Nightingale” prisons, modelled on the field hospitals built during the Covid-19 pandemic, and end early release for those convicted of serious offences. Anyone serving a sentence abroad would face a lifetime ban on returning to Britain.
The announcement came weeks before Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s early release scheme takes effect in October, covering some 5,000 inmates.
A Ministry of Justice spokesman said Reform UK had “no serious answers to the Tory prisons crisis” and would push the system towards collapse.
Several European governments have already turned to renting cells abroad. Denmark has agreed to send up to 300 foreign convicts to a prison in Kosovo under a deal worth €200 million, while Sweden is to rent capacity at Tartu prison in Estonia.
El Salvador’s prisons drew international attention after United States President Donald Trump’s administration deported 238 Venezuelans to the Terrorism Confinement Centre (CECOT) in March 2025. Rights groups have documented arbitrary detention and deaths in custody under a state of exception in force since March 2022.
The Salvadoran Government has not confirmed any contacts with Reform UK.
