Texas Attorney General Backs Down from Obama on Syrian Refugees

The federal government slammed the Texas government’s lawsuit, calling it “frivolous”, adding that immigration is a federal responsibility over which state governments have no authority, CBSDFW reports. The commission had been ordered by Texas Governor Greg Abbott not to participate in any federal resettlement of Syrian refugees.

The state’s decision to back down – at least temporarily – was welcome news for Rebecca Robertson, the legal and policy director for the ACLU in Texas.

Texas this week asked a federal court to block the arrival of Syrian refugees, citing concerns about whether new arrivals are sufficiently screened for security.

The federal government has given Texas more information about the Syrian refugees, and now the state has dropped attempts to get a temporary restraining order to keep the refugees out. The families arrived in the United States this week, according to court papers.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission sued the US government and the relief agency to block refugee resettlement in the state.

The government is obligated to consult with states about process, procedures and the overall distribution of refugees around the country – but that doesn’t mean a consultation about every individual refugee, the Department of Justice says. A second family with four children is scheduled to arrive in Houston Monday.

November 25: The Roman Catholic bishops of Texas said that Catholic refugee agencies won’t comply with the state directive to stop resettling Syrians in Texas.

Martin Cominsky leads the Houston office of Interfaith Ministries, an organization that also has experience working with refugees, and thinks the arguments made by Texas’ officials don’t make much sense.

Texas attorney general Ken Paxton vowed that this would not be the end of litigation. Then nine more Syrians are headed for Texas on Thursday, including six more children. They include a single woman hoping to reunite with her mother, who is already in Texas.

This was the first lawsuit filed by any state to block refugee resettlement since the terrorist attacks in Paris last month. That set off a war of words between Christie and de Blasio. The withdrawal came minutes after the federal government filed a response to the state’s original complaint, calling Texas’s fears baseless and “uninformed” and urging the court to deny the state’s request for a restraining order.

The state has also requested that nonprofit groups stop providing aid to refugees fleeing from the violence of Syria. State officials warned the International Rescue Committee that failure to comply could result in being terminated from the state’s resettlement program.