Mike Pence wants to keep Syrian refugees out of Indiana. They’re coming anyway.
By Katie Zezima August 28 at 6:08 PM
INDIANAPOLIS — After a terrorist attack in Paris last year carried out in part by Islamist terrorists who masqueraded as migrants, Gov. Mike Pence directed all state agencies to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees here in Indiana.
Pence is now running on the Republican presidential ticket with Donald Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the United States, halting immigration from unspecified countries and sending Syrian refugees back to their war-torn homeland. During the campaign, Pence has also boasted about his move to block refugees in his state. “In Indiana, we suspended the Syrian refugee program . . . in the wake of the terrorist attack,” Pence said on CBS’s “60 Minutes” last month. But things did not quite work out the way Pence says they did.
A single family scheduled to come to Indiana was diverted to Connecticut shortly after Pence’s announcement in November. But thanks to a lawsuit and subsequent court ruling overturning Pence’s directive, 140 Syrian refugees have since resettled in Indiana, with more expected in coming weeks. The state’s attorney general also argued in court that the directive “does not purport to preclude any refugees from settling in Indiana.”
“You can’t pick and choose who comes to your state,” said Cole Varga, executive director of Exodus Refugee Immigration, which resettles refugees here. Exodus and the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana sued Pence days after his directive, claiming that the governor did not have constitutional authority to bar people from Indiana. While more than 30 governors have opposed housing Syrian refugees, Pence was the only one to be sued over his edict.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-pence-wants-to-keep-syrian-refugees-out-of-indiana-theyre-coming-anyway/2016/08/28/2847f4dc-6576-11e6-8b27-bb8ba39497a2_story.html?wpisrc=nl_headlines&wpmm=1
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And you can see it in the faces of these beleaguered people. Lend a helping hand, ya jerk.
