Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is preparing to amend the Immigration Act 1971 to close a loophole that currently blocks the deportation of Shabir Ahmed, the ringleader of the Rochdale grooming gang, according to The Guardian. The announcement is expected to land alongside the second reading of the government's immigration and asylum bill.

Ahmed, 73, was released in early July 2026 after serving 14 years of a 22-year sentence for 30 child rape offences. He has already been stripped of his British citizenship, a standard consequence for those convicted of the gravest offences where deprivation powers apply. But statelessness on paper has not translated into removability in practice, because of a provision in section 7 of the 1971 Act that exempts Commonwealth citizens who arrived in Britain before 1 January 1973 and had been continuously resident for five years at that point from deportation on conviction.

That provision was drafted to protect long-settled Commonwealth migrants — the same cohort at the centre of the Windrush scandal — from being uprooted decades after arrival regardless of subsequent criminal history. Ahmed's case falls within its scope, which is what has made his removal legally impossible under current statute even after citizenship deprivation.

Mahmood is expected to say that officials have identified a way to narrow or repeal the relevant provisions without disturbing the protections that shield the Windrush generation and other long-resident Commonwealth citizens from the same exposure. That distinction — carving out an exception for serious offenders like Ahmed while preserving the broader safeguard — is the legislative needle the Home Office will need to thread. The political sensitivity is obvious: any redrafting of section 7 invites scrutiny over whether it could inadvertently widen deportation exposure for the very Windrush cohort Whitehall spent years trying to make amends to.

Even if Westminster rewrites the law, deportation still depends on Pakistan's cooperation. Pakistan has refused to accept Ahmed and two other freed Rochdale ringleaders, arguing all three formally renounced their Pakistani citizenship. The UK government disputes this, pointing to what it says is evidence that Ahmed never completed the full and proper renunciation process — meaning that, in London's view, he may still hold Pakistani nationality regardless of his intent or self-declared status. A No 10 spokesperson has confirmed the citizenship question has been raised directly with officials in Islamabad, and a government source told the Guardian that ongoing FCDO negotiations, not the domestic legislative fix alone, will ultimately determine whether Ahmed remains in the UK.

That dual-track dependency — a legal change at home paired with a diplomatic resolution abroad — is what makes this case harder than a straightforward statutory amendment. Parliament can close the section 7 loophole, but a receiving state has to agree to take the deportee, and nationality disputes of this kind can drag on for years even where London believes it holds the stronger legal argument.

Home Office minister Alex Norris told the Commons that all options, including emergency legislation, remain on the table to secure Ahmed's removal, signalling the government is willing to move faster than the ordinary bill timetable if the diplomatic track stalls. On the opposition benches, Conservative MP Robbie Moore said changes to the law would probably draw support across party lines — an assessment that tracks with the broader political consensus this case has generated. The Conservatives have already pushed their own version of a fix: shadow home secretary Chris Philp presented Mahmood with a proposal to repeal two specific sections of the 1971 Act as a legislative solution, according to GB News and the Telegraph.

The cross-party convergence here is notable less for its substance than for its speed. Immigration legislation of this kind typically moves through months of consultation and drafting; the fact that both government and opposition arrived at overlapping repeal proposals within days of Ahmed's release suggests the political cost of inaction was judged to outweigh the usual caution around amending deportation exemptions tied to Windrush-era protections.

Whether the amendment clears Parliament before Ahmed's diplomatic status with Pakistan is resolved is, at this stage, an open question. A change in UK statute removes one obstacle but not the other. If Islamabad maintains its position that Ahmed is no longer its citizen, Britain could find itself with a legally deportable individual it has no country willing to receive — a scenario immigration lawyers refer to as de facto irremovability, and one that would leave Ahmed in the UK indefinitely regardless of what Mahmood's amendment achieves domestically.