Quick Facts: UK Deportation & Immigration Statistics

Data Limitations & Caveats

• Returns definition. The headline returns figure is enforced removals plus voluntary returns, the Home Office definition. People refused entry at port are always a separate series on this site; adding them would give 58,078 for 2025 but would mix two different processes.
• "Deportation" vs "return". In law, deportation is removal on criminal or public-good grounds only. Most returns are administrative removals or voluntary departures. This page uses the published Home Office categories.
• Snapshots vs flows. Hotel numbers, the foreign national prison population, and tribunal caseloads are point-in-time snapshots; returns and small boat arrivals are flows over a period. The two cannot be divided into a "removal rate".
• Provisional data. Small boats figures are daily operational counts and are revised in the quarterly Immigration System Statistics. The latest organised immigration crime quarters are provisional. A disruption is a recorded operational outcome, not an arrest or conviction count.
• Cost figures are averages. The £48,800 average includes failed removal attempts and excludes prior costs (arrests, legal proceedings, initial detention). It represents a typical single adult case.
• Tribunal figures. The open caseload (around 152,000) and pending asylum appeals (87,450) are taken directly from the MoJ Tribunal Statistics Quarterly publication for January to March 2026 and are updated quarterly, not live.
• Revisions. All Home Office quarterly series are revised at each release; figures on this page reflect the publications named against each fact and may differ from later revisions.