Deportation rates for some foreign offenders fall below 5 per cent

Home Office figures show that return rates for foreign offenders vary sharply by nationality, with fewer than five per cent of some groups deported in the year to June 2025. The figures have prompted Conservative criticism that people facing deportation orders remain in the UK and may reoffend, while the Home Office says returns are rising.

In June 2025, 773 Nigerian offenders were awaiting deportation, and 37 were returned in the previous year; for Jamaica, 24 of 775 were removed, a rate of 3.1 per cent. The article says 21,294 offenders were living in the UK under deportation orders in June 2026, up from 5,928 a decade earlier, while Romania recorded 990 returns. Labour returned 35,000 people in its first year in office, 30 per cent of them foreign criminals; the Home Office says nearly 12,000 foreign criminals were returned or deported in the two years after the 2024 election, 41 per cent more than in the preceding two years.