Kicked Out, Back In: 1,848 Deported Foreign Criminals Caught Back in Britain in Five Years

News | By Matt, Editor

1,848. That’s how many foreign criminals with deportation orders were found back in Britain over the last five years and put on a plane again, according to Home Office figures obtained by The Sun on Sunday. Of those, 246 had already been kicked out at least twice and still came back.

Last year the number caught was 473. That’s close to ten a week, up 45% on 2021, and the third year in a row it has gone up. And those are only the ones who got caught.

Key facts

• 1,848 foreign national offenders were caught back in the UK in breach of a deportation order and removed again over five years (2021 to 2025), the Home Office figures show.
• 246 of them had been removed on at least two separate occasions. That’s more than one in eight.
• 473 were caught last year, against 327 in 2021 and 284 in 2022. The figure has risen for three years running.
• A deportation order is served on foreign nationals jailed for a year or more. It bans them from coming back for at least ten years. Coming back anyway is a crime with a maximum of five years in prison.
• The figures only count people who were caught. The Sun says the true number is likely to be higher.

“Record” removals, and a revolving door

The Home Office’s answer was to talk about removals. A spokesman said: “Any foreign national offenders who return in breach of a deportation order will face robust enforcement action, and we will seek to remove them from the UK at the earliest opportunity.”

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“Returns are at their highest level in nearly a decade, with almost 12,000 foreign criminals returned or deported since the election – a 41% increase on the two years prior.”

That number stands up. The government’s own returns statistics show 11,733 foreign national offender returns between 1 July 2024 and 31 July 2026, and Home Office minister Anna Turley repeated the 41% rise in a written answer to Reform’s Lee Anderson on 3 November. Nearly 6,000 of those went under the early removal scheme, which lets prisoners out early on condition they leave.

But more removals and more people coming straight back can both be true at once. Deporting someone only works if the border keeps them out afterwards. On these figures, for hundreds a year, it doesn’t.

Who is to blame?

To be fair about it, the five years in the Sun’s figures run from 2021 to 2025, so they cover both the Conservatives and Labour. The Tories were in charge from 2021 until July 2024. The problem didn’t start with Labour.

What has happened on Labour’s watch is that the number has kept rising, to the highest of the five years in 2025, while ministers have made foreign criminal removals the centrepiece of their immigration message. The Sun reports the Home Office is spending upwards of £8 million on extra detention places to deport thousands more a year.

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, told the paper: “It beggars belief that our borders are now so wide open that deported criminals can, seemingly, walk in at will. The Home Secretary must explain herself and tell us what she is going to do about this scandal.” GB News reported the same figures on Sunday morning.

Deported. Then back in Britain. Home Office figures revealed by the Sun show 1,800 foreign criminals who had been deported were caught back in this country. More than one in eight of those 1,800 had already been deported twice. In one recent year alone, 473 were caught and thrown… pic.twitter.com/ZCsRsMU3u5

— The State of Britain (@stateofbritain1) November 8, 2026

And the EU wants fewer removals, not more

This lands in the same month as Andy Burnham’s EU reset. A leaked draft statement for the 20 November summit asks Britain to commit not to proceed with early removals and deportations of EU nationals under the Sentencing Act 2026, as we reported last week. The draft hasn’t been signed off by member states yet.

Reform’s Zia Yusuf put it bluntly when the draft came out.

Burnham is about to surrender Britain’s ability to deport foreign criminals to the EU.

A leaked draft of Burnham’s ‘Brexit Reset’ states the UK will ‘not proceed’ with early deportations and removals to the EU under the Sentencing Act 2026.

Since 2023, the authorities have sent…

— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) November 6, 2026

If you want the background on how deportation actually works, why so few people are removed and where the cases get stuck, our explainer Deportations Explained: Why Britain Removes So Few went up earlier today.

Reform says it would go further than any of this.

Britain’s justice system is broken.

Reform UK will deport all illegal migrants and foreign offenders, expand stop-and-search in crime hotspots and recruit 30,000 police officers. pic.twitter.com/kU7iymqGxG

— Reform UK (@reformparty_uk) November 1, 2026

Our view

Ministers love the removals number. Fine, it’s up. But nobody in a town where a deported burglar or dealer turns up again cares how many flights left last year. They care whether the man stays gone.

A deportation order that hundreds of people ignore every year isn’t much of an order. The law already allows up to five years inside for coming back. The question is whether anyone is ever made to serve it before being sent home again, and the Home Office didn’t say.

Should foreign criminals caught back in Britain after deportation face automatic jail before removal? Vote in our poll below.

Sources

• The Sun on Sunday, 8 November 2026: Home Office figures, Home Office statement, Alp Mehmet
• GB News, 8 November 2026: second report of the figures and the Home Office statement
• GOV.UK: Returns from the UK, 1 July 2024 to 31 July 2026: 11,733 FNO returns, 5,995 early removal scheme returns
• UK Parliament written answer 38664, 3 November 2026: 11,733 and the 41% increase
• Breaking Brexit News, 3 November 2026: EU draft on deportations

Main image: Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood at the Home Office, September 2025. UK Home Office / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0. Social images also use photos from Lauren Hurley / No 10 (OGL v3), Eric Fischer (CC BY 2.0), Philafrenzy (CC BY-SA 4.0), Derek Harper (CC BY-SA 2.0) and ITookSomePhotos (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Related

• Deportations Explained: Why Britain Removes So Few
• EU Demands Britain Drop Plan to Deport More European Criminals Before Reset Deal