U.K. Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigns over immigration scandal

TIL Desk/World/London/ Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned on Monday as pressure mounted on her to quit the Cabinet post amid a scandal over authorities’ mistreatment of long-term U.K. residents wrongly labelled as illegal immigrants.

Ms. Rudd, who was due to make a House of Commons statement later in the day, had been under increasing pressure to quit over the scandal involving Caribbean immigrants who were brought to the U.K. from the so-called “Windrush generation” from the 1940s.

She had faced criticism over the existence of U.K. Home Office deportation targets and her knowledge of them. “The Prime Minister [Theresa May] has tonight accepted the resignation of the Home Secretary”. Ms. Rudd, who faced calls to step down from the Opposition Labour Party, telephoned May to inform her of her decision to resign.

Ms. Rudd had been under pressure to explain apparent discrepancies between her evidence to the Parliament’s Home Affairs Select Committee last week denying any knowledge of deportation targets for illegal migrants in the U.K. Home Office headed by her and a memo leaked to the media that linked her to such targets.