British Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigns amid immigration scandal

Amber Rudd resigns as British home secretary

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/CNN)

published 30 April 2018

Amber Rudd, a key ally of British Prime Minister Theresa May, resigned as home secretary on Sunday, saying she had "inadvertently misled" Parliament about immigration policy. On Wednesday, Rudd — who oversees immigration, police, and counter-terrorism, among other portfolios — told Parliament that the Home Office did not have specific targets for deporting illegal immigrants, a claim contradicted by a January 2017 letter from Rudd to May published by The Guardian on Sunday.

Rudd had already been grappling for two weeks with the Windrush scandal, or the threatened wrongful deportation of up to 50,000 legal residents who were recruited from Jamaica and elsewhere in the West Indies between 1948 and 1973 to live in and help rebuild Britain after World War II. (One of the first ships the migrants arrived on was the Empire Windrush.) May was home minister during the period that most of the Windrush problems occurred, tied to her self-proclaimed "really hostile environment" for illegal (and some legal) immigrants. You can learn more about the scandal and how Rudd's departure is a setback for May in this CNN report:

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Rudd, 54, is the fourth minister forced out of May's Cabinet in the past six months, after Sir Michael Fallon, Damian Green, and Priti Patel.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.