KEMI Badenoch has backed Donald Trump-style mass deportations of immigrants.
The Tory leader said that all illegal immigrants should be deported in a bid to outflank Nigel Farage to his right.
Farage has previously dismissed calls for mass deportations as impossible.
Speaking on BBC 5 Live, Badenoch said: “We need to make sure that we remove foreign criminals from our country. And we actually put down an amendment that says that we will deport. It's not going to be easy, but you've got to start from somewhere.
“If you start from the position of, oh, well, it can't be done, then you're never going to do it. We have a problem now with immigration being too high. I have acknowledged that that happened under the Conservatives' watch. I was not in charge. I am now. And that is something that we are going to fix.”
Host Matt Chorley asked whether she was committed to “mass deportations of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants”.
The Conservative leader replied: “Of foreign criminals? Absolutely. If people are in the country illegally, then they should be deported. That is the law. Otherwise you're rewarding people for breaking the law.”
Farage (below) recently unveiled plans to create a “minister for deportations” if he became prime minister, but has previously ruled out mass deportations.
In an interview with GB News last September, Farage said: “For us, at the moment, it's a political impossibility. I'm not going to get dragged down the route of mass deportations or anything like that.”
Elsewhere, Badenoch called for a statue of Margaret Thatcher to be built outside Parliament, saying it was “odd” there was not one already.
She said: “I do think that we should have a statue of Margaret Thatcher outside Parliament.
“There's one that's near the chamber of the House of Commons that's inside, but most people would never see that. I think she's such an iconic figure. It's odd that she isn't there.”
The Tories face a bruising result at the upcoming local elections in England, where they are defending almost 1000 seats.
A poll by Tory peer Lord Hayward predicted a devastating night for his party, estimating they will lose between 475 and 525 council seats.
Their losses are expected to be Reform’s gains, with Farage’s party expected to win between 400 and 450 seats in local authorities across England.
