Amnesty International has criticised a reported proposal by Reform UK to transfer foreign nationals convicted of offences in the United Kingdom to prisons in El Salvador to serve their sentences, warning that such a policy could expose prisoners to serious human rights violations.
Responding to the proposal, Steve Valdez-Symonds, Amnesty International UK’s Refugee and Migrant Rights Director, said the plan could amount to using British public funds to support a prison system where serious abuses have been documented.
Amnesty International said it has recorded cases in El Salvador involving arbitrary detention, torture and other forms of ill-treatment, enforced disappearances, inadequate access to medical care and deaths in custody. The organisation has also raised concerns about the conditions faced by detainees and the difficulties families can experience in locating relatives held in detention.
Valdez-Symonds argued that transferring people convicted in the UK to such a system would raise significant questions about Britain’s responsibility for the treatment of prisoners whose sentences are being served abroad. He described the proposal as part of a broader political approach that, in Amnesty’s assessment, risks prioritising headline-generating measures over practical and legally sustainable solutions.
Amnesty also drew a comparison with the UK’s previous Rwanda asylum policy, arguing that proposals initially regarded as politically or practically unlikely can become government policy when political pressure and hostility towards migrants take precedence over legal and humanitarian considerations.
The organisation further criticised what it described as a growing tendency among politicians to use rhetoric that could contribute to hostility and inhumanity, arguing that such approaches do not necessarily make communities safer.
The reported Reform UK proposal therefore raises wider policy questions beyond immigration and criminal justice, including the UK’s human rights obligations, accountability for prisoners transferred overseas, standards of detention, access to legal safeguards and the use of public funds to operate or support foreign detention arrangements.
PolicyGov Note: This report is based on a statement and material published by Amnesty International UK on 10 August 2026. The views and allegations concerning conditions in El Salvador are attributed to Amnesty International and should not be presented as independent findings by PolicyGov. Reform UK’s position should also be considered separately when further official details of the proposal become available.
Source: Amnesty International UK, “UK: Reform\'s El Salvador prison plan would be ‘financing brutality’ with public money”, 10 August 2026.
Original source and copyright: Amnesty International UK. This PolicyGov article is a journalistic/policy analysis based on the organisation’s publicly released statement and does not reproduce the original text.