UK’s May replaces minister for immigration as scandal widens

Javid, Britain’s former community’s secretary, is the first minority politician to hold one of Britain’s four top government jobs. (Photo By UK Parliament, CC BY 3.0)

LONDON – British Prime Minister Theresa May has named Sajid Javid as Britain’s new interior minister after the previous minister resigned amid an immigration scandal.

Javid, Britain’s former community’s secretary, is the first minority politician to hold one of Britain’s four top government jobs.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd resigned late Sunday, saying she had “inadvertently” misled lawmakers about whether the government had deportation targets.

The furor began when the Guardian newspaper reported that some people who came to the U.K. from the Caribbean 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 live here.

Javid, whose parents came from Pakistan, has expressed anger at the treatment of those U.K. citizens, telling the Sunday Telegraph: “That could be me.”