Small Victory For Syrian Refugees In Texas, As Court Showdown Looms

Texas will allow some Syrians to resettle in the state in coming days, officials said on Friday -- but they won't drop their lawsuit aimed at keeping out refugees in general. 

Hours after the Obama administration and a Dallas refugee resettlement group filed legal responses in opposition to Texas' lawsuit, the state attorney general Ken Paxton withdrew a request for an emergency hearing and instead asked that the court hold a hearing next week. 

The decision clears the way for two Syrian families who were already scheduled to move to Texas this weekend. Paxton said in a statement that the state had received additional information about those refugees from the federal government, ​although he did not elaborate on what they had asked for.

But the legal battle will continue over whether Texas has the authority to keep other Syrian refugees out of the state. On Friday morning, the federal government and International Rescue Committee filed a legal response in opposition to Texas' suit, asking the courts not to agree to a temporary injunction that would keep Syrian families from resettling in the state.

The lawsuit is the latest in an ongoing effort by governors, most of them Republican, to keep out Syrian refugees based on purported security concerns. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced last month, soon after terrorist attacks in Paris, that he would no longer allow Syrian refugees into his state. Most other governors similarly voiced opposition to Syrian refugees.

IRC, like several other refugee groups, said it would continue to resettle Syrians over the governors' objections. Texas' lawsuit against the federal government and IRC accuses them of failing to cooperate and collaborate with the state, as required by law.

That argument is "nonsensical," according to Cecillia Wang, director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, which is representing IRC, along with Southern Poverty Law Center and National Immigration Law Center.

"Texas is decreeing that cooperation means Texas gets a unilateral veto and can instruct one of these non-profit organizations to discriminate against a group of refugee families solely based on their nationality," she told The Huffington Post. "That is just completely backwards and contrary to the federal law."

Several experts have said that governors don't have the authority to block Syrian refugees, or the legal right to discriminate against them. The federal government sets immigration policy, so governors cannot tell the Obama administration who to admit as refugees.

In its filing, the federal government argued that Texas had failed to make a case for why it would be harmful to admit Syrian refugees to the state. All refugees go through an extensive screening program.

"Since fiscal year 2011, 243 Syrian refugees have resettled in Texas," it reads. "Yet Plaintiff does not explain how these specific refugees -- mostly children, their parents, and in one case their grandparents -- pose a danger to anyone anywhere, let alone to the State of Texas."

Syrian refugee resettlement has continued amid the backlash, although one family that was supposed to move to Indiana last month was sent elsewhere because of opposition from Republican Gov. Mike Pence. The ACLU sued Pence last month over his plan to suspend admission of Syrian refugees.

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