UK’s Home Secretary quits over Windrush scandal

Jill Lawless
London, UK.- Britain’s interior minister resigned Sunday amid a scandal over authorities’ mistreatment of long-term U.K. residents wrongly caught up in a government drive to reduce illegal immigration.

Prime Minister There’s May’s office said late Sunday that May had accepted the resignation of Home Secretary Amber Rudd. Rudd had been due to make a statement to Parliament on Monday over the “Windrush scandal,” which has dominated headlines in Britain for days and has sparked intense criticism of the Conservative government’s tough immigration policies.

The furor has grown since the Guardian newspaper reported that some people who came to the U.K. from the Caribbean in the decades after World War II had recently been refused medical care in Britain or threatened with deportation because they could not produce paperwork proving their right to reside in the country.

The government has now issued an apology over its treatment of the 'Windrush generation', who are being ordered to prove they have the right to stay in Britain - even though they have been here over 50 years.

Like EU citizens who live in Britain now, Windrush migrants have permission to stay under UK rules.

But they have been told that they have to prove they are eligible to stay - despite it emerging that landing cards recording their arrival dates were destroyed in 2010, months after Theresa May became Home Secretary.