Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many illegal migrants his Department deported in 2023.

The Home Office published provisional data on returns of migrants who do not have a legal right to stay in the UK in the ad-hoc ‘Statistics relating to Illegal Migration’ release. Total numbers of returns by month and return type (including enforced returns of which ‘deportations’ are a subset) are published in table IMB_05 of the accompanying data tables. The latest data relates to 27 December 2023.

The term ‘deportations’ refers to a legally defined subset of returns, which are enforced either following a criminal conviction, or when it is judged that a person’s removal from the UK is beneficial to the public good. The published statistics refer to enforced returns which include deportations, as well as cases where a person has breached UK immigration laws, and those removed under other administrative and illegal entry powers that have declined to leave voluntarily. Figures on deportations, which are a subset of enforced returns, are not separately available.

Alongside the above ad-hoc statistical release, the Home Office publishes quarterly data on returns in the ‘Immigration System Statistics Quarterly Release’. The latest data go up to the end of September 2023. Data to end December will be published in the next release on 29 February.