“We are taking bold and innovative steps and it’s surprising that those institutions that criticise the plans fail to offer their own solutions,” Patel wrote in The Times with Vincent Biruta, Rwanda’s foreign minister, a week after the announcement.

The plan will see some asylum seekers sent to Rwanda for processing, where they will have the right to apply to live. It includes a £120 million (US$154 million) economic deal with Rwanda, which has been promoted as a win-win for both the east African country and UK.

But not everyone sees it that way. The UK-based Refugee Council has called the Rwanda plan “cruel and nasty”, while the UN refugee agency said that people fleeing conflict and persecution “should not be traded like commodities”.

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, the UK’s most senior religious figure, described it as “the opposite of the nature of God”.

27 migrants die in deadliest Channel boat tragedy between France and UK

Conservative former prime minister Theresa May questioned its legality and practicality and Labour leader Keir Starmer called it unethical, unworkable and costly.

“I do not believe sufficient evidence can be obtained to demonstrate that the policy will have a deterrent effect significant enough to make the policy value for money,” he wrote.

An unidentified civil servant posted a message on a government staff online notice board, which was leaked to the media last week: “The words ‘I was only obeying orders’ are echoing down through history to me and making me queasy”. That appeared to be a reference to the so-called Nuremberg defence used by Nazis after the end of World War II.

Patel’s plans have already been dealt setbacks. A legal review and resistance from the UK’s Ministry of Defence has forced the Home Office to abandon a policy of sending asylum seekers at sea back to France, at least for now.

Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “It’s not about individual ministers but the impact and implementation of policy, for which the whole government is responsible; that is the issue. Specifically on this, the government’s performance can only be described as having been woeful”.

English Channel migrants: risking death for a new life in the UK

Offshore processing for asylum seekers isn’t a new concept. Since its offshore processing began in 2012, Australia has sent thousands of “illegal maritime arrivals” to Nauru or Papua New Guinea.

European Union countries previously discussed setting up external centres to receive refugees in 2016-18 after a spike in Mediterranean arrivals, but legal, humanitarian, political, safety and financial concerns eclipsed the proposals back then.

Denmark said last week it was also in talks with Rwanda about a possible asylum seeker transfer deal.

The Home Office’s tough stance on some asylum seekers contrasts with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s offer in India last week, where he was seeking arms deals, to grant more UK visas for Indian IT professionals.

India-born migrants to Australia now surpass Chinese, data shows

Patel, 50, is one of two Johnson cabinet ministers of Indian heritage. Her family immigrated to the UK from Uganda in the 1960s before Ugandan dictator Idi Amin started expelling Indians in 1972.

The other is the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak. Patel and Sunak’s ancestral roots are in the Indian state of Gujarat, home of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

A hard-line Brexit supporter, Patel was appointed home secretary after Johnson’s landslide election win in 2019.

Before politics, Patel was a lobbyist for the tobacco industry. In government, she has not been far from controversy.

In 2020, Patel faced calls to resign over allegations she mistreated staff in her present and previous roles – claims she denied.

‘Border farce’: UK slammed over visa delays for Ukrainians fleeing war

Last year, Patel was called before a tribunal after she was accused of bullying by a former Home Office permanent secretary Philip Rutnam.

However, she avoided having to respond to the claims in a hearing after an intervention by Johnson and a £350,000 (US$446,000) payout to Rutnam.

The prime minister’s ministerial standards adviser Alex Allan then resigned, accusing Johnson of ignoring his findings that concluded Patel had broken the Ministerial Code for appropriate conduct.

Patel apologised for any upset she may have caused.

Patel also came under scrutiny in her previous role as international development secretary where it emerged she had paid her husband Alex Sawyer, a former marketing consultant for Nasdaq, to work part time in her office for three years.

Patel was sacked from that position in 2017 by then UK leader May, after Patel broke Ministerial Code protocol while on holiday in Israel. Patel did not inform May before she held a private meeting with Israel’s then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and visited the occupied Golan Heights.

Patel enjoys support from May’s successor Johnson, with whom she shares views on Brexit and other policies, including immigration. Johnson has promised to control immigration, a key Brexit campaign issue.

A majority of voters in Patel’s local constituency of Witham in southeast England voted in 2016 for the UK to leave the EU. According to the last census in 2011, just over 1,000 of Witham’s 24,000 inhabitants identified as an ethnic minority.

Additional reporting by Reuters