PapersBorders
The New Illegal Arrivals Detention Estate
Build a 30,000-place secure estate so every new illegal arrival can be detained until removal — capacity online within a year.
The argument
Restore Britain’s argument is that illegal entry stops only when it brings no social or economic reward. The paper therefore proposes universal secure detention of every detected illegal entrant, pending removal. It is written as the capacity plan that would sit under the earlier mass-deportations paper, not as a place to hold the entire pre-existing irregular population at once.
The estate is three regional centres of about 10,000 places each, built with modern modular units, with room to expand. The absolute deadline is 30,000 commissioned places within 12 months of authorisation, with capacity starting to come online within six months. Border detention is assigned to a new UK Borders and Coastal Command.
The legal premise is new detention legislation from the mass-deportations programme. The paper says the ideal is processing and removal within 24 hours, to the country of origin or a safe third country, but the estate is sized on the assumption that 24 hours will often not be met. It uses 41,472 small-boat arrivals in 2025 as the planning baseline and warns that, with no removals, a constant inflow would fill 30,000 places in roughly eight months.
What they propose
- 1
Three secure, semi-permanent centres, about 10,000 places each, expandable past 30,000 if occupancy or arrivals demand it.
- 2
Universal detention of new illegal entrants from day one of the regime — no routine release because beds have run out.
- 3
Phased build: some capacity within six months; 30,000 commissioned places within 12 months.
- 4
Modular accommodation built to UK fire, insulation, sanitation and secure-detention standards.
- 5
Parallel workstreams from day one: construction, operations, removals, urgent healthcare, casework and staffing.
- 6
Expansion trigger if projected 90-day occupancy exceeds a threshold such as 85% of usable capacity.
- 7
Start operations in the lowest-arrival season to reduce the chance of filling the estate before removals catch up.
- 8
Legislation must set purpose, who is covered, duration, review, vulnerability arrangements, and the link between detention and a realistic prospect of removal.
In the same file
Borders
Maritime domainCreate UK Borders & Coastal Command — a civilian maritime force — so the Royal Navy is not the default answer to small boats.
Borders
Mass deportationsRemove everyone the paper classes as living in Britain illegally, by statute first and then by a two-track returns machine.