24 August 2026 , 18:58
385
0
More than £500,000 a day is spent detaining illegal migrants and moving them around the country, The Sun can reveal.
The Home Office has paid £185,548,017 to transport and house those in immigration detention and Border Force custody in the UK and overseas in the space of a year.
The figure includes moving people between prisons, police stations, hospitals and short-term holding facilities, and the upkeep of Immigration Removal Centres.
It also includes escorting migrants to, and on to, deportation flights when they leave the country.
The lion’s share of the cash goes to contractor Mitie, which has managed the process for the Home Office since 2018.
The bulk of this money — £137,081,112 — is spent on escorts who move migrants around the UK. That works out at £375,564 each day.
The rest — £48,466,905 — is spent on overseas escorts for migrants where they are taken back to their country of origin either on scheduled or chartered flights.
The figures, released by the Home Office, cover June 2025 to May 2026.
John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The Home Office needs to pull the handbrake on this eye-watering waste immediately.”
Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp called it “a catastrophic waste of taxpayers’ hard-earned money”.
The Home Office said that the sums “incorporate broader expenditure for a significant amount of other services including immigration detention facilities and wider operational matters”.
Politics Editor