How much does the UK spend on deporting illegal immigrants?

1. The simple question meets a fragmented answer: why no single deportation bill exists

The government’s published accounts and Home Office datasets do not isolate a definitive annual total labelled “spending on deporting illegal immigrants”; instead, spending is recorded across asylum support, border operations, detention, returns and legal processes. That fragmentation means researchers and journalists derive totals by combining per‑removal cost estimates with numbers of removals or by examining proposals that model expanded activity, rather than by quoting a single official line item ^{[4] [3]}. This reporting gap is compounded by varied definitions—“deportation”, “enforced removal” and “voluntary return” are recorded differently—and by expenditure recorded in capital budgets (e.g., for detention estate expansion) versus operational budgets, making direct comparisons difficult ^{[5] [6]}.

2. Per‑removal and programme costs tell different stories: low and high estimates

Longstanding Home Office material and previous analyses have used a per‑enforced‑removal figure of roughly £13,000–£15,000, covering escorting, detention and arrest team costs but excluding legal appeals; this produces modest aggregate figures if removals remain limited in number ^[1]. By contrast, the government’s impact assessment for the Rwanda scheme estimated a gross cost of about £169,000 per person relocated to a third country, breaking down into large payments to the destination country and high escort and processing costs—an order of magnitude higher than the typical enforced‑removal estimate ^[2]. The divergence reflects differing operational models: short removals to Europe or voluntary returns versus complex third‑country relocation programmes with sizable transfer payments and long‑term processing costs ^{[2] [1]}.

3. Recent Home Office and watchdog data point to much larger headline spending pressures

Recent fiscal reporting shows the Home Office’s asylum, border and immigration operations rising sharply: analysts and watchdogs cite figures such as £3.6 billion spent on asylum support in 2022–23 and Home Office budgets running in the billions with large overspends and forecast pressures for 2024–25. Those totals cover hotels, processing, legal support and enforcement together, not deportations alone, but they demonstrate the scale of immigration‑related public spending and the fiscal context in which deportation policy sits ^{[6] [5]}. Planned capital spending—such as £306 million for new detention centres—adds one‑off and recurring layers that feed into any attempt to estimate deportation programme costs ^[6].

4. Political proposals multiply headline numbers: what parties and think‑tanks have modelled

Political plans and advocacy papers present very different cost pictures: one “mass‑deportation” blueprint models a lifetime scheme costing £40.9–£47.5 billion with annual deportation‑related outlays of £8–9 billion—including a tenfold boost to Immigration Enforcement and large enforced‑removal and voluntary‑return line items—while a Conservative election proposal outlined a £1.6 billion per year “Removal Force” alongside other potential increases ^{[3] [7]}. These are projections tied to specific policy designs and operational assumptions; they illustrate how scale and method (e.g., detention capacity, number of removals, third‑country payments) drive costs far beyond the modest per‑removal figures used in older Home Office material ^{[3] [7]}.

5. Bottom line: an approximate framework but no tidy total—what the evidence supports

Available, reliable facts support three firm points: official per‑removal estimates historically sit around £13k–£15k, high‑profile third‑country schemes can imply £169k per person, and broader Home Office spending on asylum and border operations now runs into the billions, with policy proposals that would add billions more ^{[1] [2] [6] [3]}. Any answer about “how much the UK spends on deporting illegal immigrants” therefore requires specifying the scope—single enforced removals, voluntary returns, detention infrastructure, or ambitious mass‑deportation programmes—because each yields very different totals and policy trade‑offs ^{[1] [3]}.