Texas sued the federal government and refugee aid group International Rescue Committee on Wednesday, citing the expected arrival of more Syrians.
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As of Tuesday, Donna Duvin, executive director of the International Rescue Committee’s Dallas branch, said she expected “to be able to receive” the two families. The federal government is directing the nonprofit entity tasked with placing the refugees in Texas from disclosing even basic information that would help resolve Texas’s security concerns.
Governor Greg Abbott has been calling for resettlement efforts to halt and for additional information to be provided about refugees already in the state in the wake of the Paris terrorist attacks that left 130 people dead.
On 2 December, 2015, Indiana’s Governor said that he had asked a Roman Catholic Archdiocese to not bring a Syrian refugee family to the state.
More than 170 Syrians have settled in the USA since the Paris terrorist attack, including in states whose governors resisted, according to the State Department.
The International Rescue Committee responded in a statement saying that the Syrian refugees are “the most securely vetted group of people” entering the USA, the Associated Press reported.
The lawsuit comes in an attempt to block the resettlement of Syrian refugees. The lawsuit argues there would be “substantial threat that irreparable injury will result” from allowing Syrian refugee resettlement to the state to continue. “The IRC acts within the spirit and letter of the law, and we are hopeful that this matter resolved soon”. In a letter to Traylor, Texas Impact, a faith-based organization that crafts policy with theological grounding, said the HHS action “constitutes an unprecedented attempt on the part of a state agency to pressure private nonprofit organizations to violate federal law and their federal contractual obligations”.
The filing in federal court followed a series of behind-the-scenes moves over the past day regarding the potential resettlement of a Syrian refugee family of six in Texas, BuzzFeed News has learned.
The Justice Department said it would review the complaint after formally receiving it. The White House declined to comment.
“The state is itself failing to “cooperate” with the federal program and the local agencies”, said Omar Jadwat of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Right Project yesterday when Texas threatened legal action.
Refugee resettlement in the United States is completely funded by the federal government, but the state is in charge of contracting with local nonprofit organizations and distributing federal dollars to those agencies.
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Federal courts – including the U.S. Supreme Court – have upheld that immigration and admission of noncitizens to the United States is a federal responsibility and one managed wholly by the federal government.
