Reform UK is drawing up an extraordinary plan to send thousands of foreign criminals to serve their sentences in El Salvador’s brutal prisons if the party wins power.
Lee Anderson, Reform’s chairman, is expected to travel to the Central American country within months for talks with President Nayib Bukele’s government over whether Britain could pay to house foreign inmates there.
The proposal would represent one of the most dramatic attempts yet to tackle Britain’s chronic prison overcrowding.
According to reports, Mr Anderson has already held discussions with Salvadoran officials about the possibility of renting prison places.
Reform leader Nigel Farage is expected to pledge to remove around 10,000 foreign prisoners from the British prison system, arguing that serious offenders should remain behind bars rather than be released early because jails are full.
The party’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf said: “We will deport all 10,000 foreign nationals from our prisons, sending them to serve their sentences in countries like El Salvador.
“We will use the space created to ensure that serious criminals stay where they belong: behind bars.”
El Salvador has become internationally notorious for President Bukele’s sweeping crackdown on gangs, under which tens of thousands of suspected criminals have been detained.
His government has built vast prisons, including the notorious Terrorism Confinement Centre, as part of a campaign that has transformed the country’s security situation but also attracted fierce criticism from human rights groups.
Reform’s proposal follows a similar agreement struck by Donald Trump’s administration with El Salvador earlier this year to transfer migrants to the country.
Mr Farage is also expected to renew his call for temporary “Nightingale prisons”, modelled on the hospitals rapidly constructed during the Covid pandemic.
The proposals come as Britain’s prison system approaches a critical capacity crunch.
The government has warned that overcrowding is already threatening the ability of police to make arrests and courts to remand suspects.
The crisis has become politically explosive following controversy over the early release of prisoners, including fears that killers of emergency workers could be released before completing their full sentences.
Reform argues that the government has created an impossible choice: either allow prisons to overflow or release offenders early.
Its solution is uncompromising — remove foreign prisoners, build emergency capacity and restore short custodial sentences for some repeat offenders.
Critics are likely to question whether prisoners can legally be transferred overseas and whether foreign governments can safely house British inmates for lengthy sentences.
But with prisons running out of space, Reform is betting that voters will favour a policy with a simple message: if Britain’s jails are full, stop releasing criminals — find somewhere else to put them.
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