Islamophobia

Court Rejects Mike Pence’s Appeal to Block Refugees

Written by SK Ashby

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals could have simply rejected Indiana Governor Mike Pence's appeal to lift an injunction preventing the state from withholding federal funds from humanitarian groups that resettle Syrian refugees, but the court went a little further than that.

The 7th Circuit ruled that Governor Pence does not have the authority to block the federal government's actions, which is an obvious ruling, but the court also noted that Pence based his appeal on a fictional "nightmare" scenario.

The decision also said Indiana's briefs in the case had provided "no evidence that Syrian terrorists are posing as refugees or that Syrian refugees have ever committed acts of terrorism in the United States."

"The governor of Indiana believes, though without evidence, that some of these persons were sent to Syria by ISIS to engage in terrorism and now wish to infiltrate the United States in order to commit terrorist acts here. No evidence of this belief has been presented, however; it is nightmare speculation," the appeals court wrote.

Because Pence's legal team could not provide any evidence to suggest Syrian refugees are a security threat, the court opined that blocking resettlement would be clearly discriminatory.

This is a bit a misnomer at this point because the 10,000 Syrian refugees the Obama administration hoped to settle in America have already been settled. They're already here and we have not been overcome by the wave of terrorism Governor Mike Pence and his running mate Donald Trump told us was coming.

Governor Pence and even Donald Trump cling to their Christianity, but both of them would deny innocent people a safe home for no substantive reason.