British Interior Minister Amber Rudd has resigned after Prime Minister Theresa May's government faced an outpouring of indignation over its treatment of some long-term Caribbean residents who were wrongly labeled illegal immigrants.
In a resignation letter to May on Sunday, Rudd said she had inadvertently misled a parliamentary committee by denying the government had targets for the deportation of illegal migrants. May accepted her resignation.
For two weeks, British ministers have been struggling to explain why some descendants of the so-called "Windrush generation", invited to Britain to plug labor shortfalls between 1948 and 1971, had been denied basic rights.
The Windrush scandal overshadowed the Commonwealth summit in London and has raised questions about May's six-year stint as interior minister before she became prime minister in the wake of the 2016 Brexit referendum.
"The Windrush scandal has rightly shone a light on an important issue for our country," Rudd said in a resignation letter to May.
Rudd, who was appointed Home Secretary in 2016, said voters wanted those who had the right to reside in Britain to be treated fairly and humanely but also that illegal immigrants be removed.
The resignation of one of May’s closest allies is a blow as she navigates the final year of negotiations ahead of Britain's exit from the European Union in March 2019. It also deprives the cabinet of one of its most outspoken pro-European members.
