Reform UK wants to build something that looks a lot like America's ICE agency, and they're not hiding it. Nigel Farage's party has laid out "Operation Restoring Justice," a plan to create a "UK Deportation Command" that would merge NHS records, police databases, and financial data into one surveillance system. The target: 288,000 deportations a year, five flights a day, 24,000 detention beds. An "Illegal Migrant Identification Centre" would automatically share data across government and private entities, with mandatory biometric capture at every police encounter.
Palantir, the surveillance contractor already running similar systems for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has signaled it's ready to help. Louis Mosley, Palantir's UK head, told the Observer that if Reform wins with a "clear public mandate," the company would provide access to NHS data for immigration enforcement. Palantir already holds at least £670 million in UK government contracts processing NHS, police, and military data. Its ImmigrationOS and ELITE platforms, built on Palantir Foundry, use AI-driven analysis to integrate fragmented government databases, apply algorithmic risk scoring, and automate deportation logistics from detention bed management to flight coordination.
Labour may have already built the legal on-ramp. The Data (Use and Access) Act, passed earlier this year, gives ministers so-called "Henry VIII powers" to change data access rules by statutory instrument without full parliamentary votes. Mariano delli Santi of the Open Rights Group called the legislation "a loaded gun" that leaves "nothing in the law" to prevent a future government from seizing more data. Reform's own policy document, published less than two months after Labour's data bill passed, explicitly cites "powers granted by the new legislation." Silkie Carlo of Big Brother Watch described the prospect of government hoarding private information for mass deportation as "chilling." Duncan McCann of the Good Law Project called it "a chilling step along the road toward a surveillance state" that imports an American model at the expense of fundamental rights. A Labour spokesperson told The Nerve these claims are "false," insisting legal checks remain in place and any rule changes would require new legislation. That may be so. But Palantir is already here, contracts in hand, and nobody in Westminster is talking about unwinding the Data (Use and Access) Act.