Republican Texas governor Greg Abbott has become the first governor in the United States of America to reject more refugees, opting out of the federal government’s 2020 refugee resettlement program.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order enabling states to reject refugees if they don’t want them, but until Abbott no Republican governors actually stepped up and did anything to block refugees from coming in to their states.
42 states have already agreed to take in refugees, with eleven days to go until the January 21 deadline for making a decision.
Abbott wrote in a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that his state was “left by Congress to deal with disproportionate migration issues resulting from a broken federal immigration system,” signaling Abbott’s acknowledgement of civilian concerns about refugee and migrant presence in all corners of the United States.
