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:
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Answers to how life on Earth began could be stuck on MarsUnder the Radar Donald Trump plans to scrap Nasa's Mars Sample Return mission – stranding test tubes on the Red Planet and ceding potentially valuable information to China
-
July 27 editorial cartoonsCartoons Today's political cartoons include tough stains, heatwaves, and vote-losing behaviour
-
5 attention-grabbing cartoons about Trump's distraction tacticsCartoons Artists take on a musical diversion, an NFL team by any other name, and more
-
Trump executive order targets homelessSpeed Read It will now be easier for states and cities to remove homeless people from the streets
-
Columbia pays $200M to settle with White HouseSpeed Read The Trump administration accused the school of failing to protect its Jewish students amid pro-Palestinian protests
-
Florida judge and DOJ make Epstein trouble for TrumpSpeed Read The Trump administration's request to release grand jury transcripts from the Epstein investigation was denied
-
Trump attacks Obama as Epstein furor mountsSpeed Read The Trump administration accused the Obama administration of 'treasonous' behavior during the 2016 election
-
Trump administration releases MLK filesSpeed Read Newly released documents on the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not hold any new revelations, King historians said
-
Japan's prime minister feels pressure after election lossesSpeed Read Shigeru Ishiba has vowed to remain in office
-
President diagnosed with 'chronic venous insufficiency'Speed Read The vein disorder has given Trump swollen ankles and visible bruising on his hands
-
'Bawdy' Trump letter supercharges Epstein scandalSpeed Read The Wall Street Journal published details of Trump's alleged birthday letter to Epstein
