Texas has taken "more than its fair share" of refugees and it's time for other states to step up, state Attorney General Ken Paxton said Tuesday, while defending Gov. Greg Abbott's decision for his state to be the first to take President Donald Trump up on his offer to bar new refugees from being received.
"I think the message is pretty simple from the governor," Paxton said on Fox News' "Fox and Friends," noting that the governor told Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that since 2010, "we have allowed more refugees into our state than any other state, all the time believing that Congress would fix our immigration problem and borders. They haven't done that."
In September, Trump announced that resettlement agencies must obtain written consent from state and local officials located in places where they want to place refugees past June of this year. The president has already cut the number of refugees allowed in to a low of 18,000. In the previous fiscal year, about 30,000 refugees were resettled in the United States.
Meanwhile, governors in 42 other states said they will still allow more refugees to come in, according to the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
About 10% of all refugees that have been resettled in the United States have been placed in Texas, Abbott wrote in the letter, and Paxton said that is an expensive burden to bear.
"(We have) the responsibility of dealing with immigrants with all types of issues," said Paxton. "We have taken it on. We still have it, because of the border crisis. I think the governor is saying it's time for other states to share since we are disproportionately responding to this."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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