The Texas Health and Human Services Commission is also suing the U.S. government as well as the IRC in an attempt to block Syrian refugees from being housed in the state.
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Lacking the authority to block refugees directly, the state asked nonprofits that work with refugees to halt their resettlement process for Syrians, according to court documents, and demanded detailed information from the State Department on all Syrian refugees scheduled to arrive in Texas. After questions arose about whether the culprits had ties to the Islamic State, Abbott joined more than two dozen mostly Republican governors in vowing to bar Syrian refugees from the states, citing security concerns.
Legal experts were not surprised by the move, since the state has no authority over immigration or refugee resettlement, and the federal government has been informing the state about the refugee vetting process and the resettlement program.
A Dallas IRC official said the group shared with Texas officials on November 12 a spreadsheet noting that 200 to 250 Syrian resettlements were proposed for Texas for this fiscal year, disputing the state’s claims it had not been consulted.
Texas “has made no showing that these refugees pose any threat, much less an imminent one, to the safety or security of Texas residents or any other Americans”, the Obama administration told the court.
Friday: Paxton ends bid for an emergency order but says he will press for an injunction requiring the Obama administration and resettlement groups to provide better information on refugees.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton contends the federal government and the non profit groups in charge of bringing the refugees are not providing enough information about them.
On Wednesday, the Texas Tribune reported that 242 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Texas over the past three years.
One of the first states to come out saying it would refuse to accept any Syrian refugees, has reversed course.
“Any state could decide when they don’t like immigrants from any particular country, and then we’d have a patchwork of discriminatory laws”, said Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Right Project in San Francisco.
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“I think it’s very good news for some of the families for whom there was some uncertainty about what would happen next but, of course, we still have a long way to go”, Robertson said. Since the Syrian civil war started in 2011, the Lone Star state has taken in around 180 Syrian refugees. “Whatever “advance consultation” and “close cooperation” mean, this is not it”, the state says. If the federal government plans on accepting 10,000 Syrian refugees this year, that would mean as many as 1,000 refugees could be headed to the Lone Star State.
