by WorldTribune Staff, December 21, 2016

The Obama administration “went behind the back” of the governor of Texas to find a city leader who favored accepting Syrian refugees after the governor said the state would no longer accept them, a report said.

“The plan, evidently, was to continue sending Syrian refugees to the Lone Star State, even as the governor initiated litigation to halt the flow,” Judicial Watch reported on Dec. 20.

Shortly after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced the state would no longer participate in the Syrian refugee resettlement program, the Obama administration conferred with Austin Mayor Steve Adler, who favored the program, according to records obtained by Judicial Watch of a conference call between the mayor’s office and the White House.

“The administration also furnished Adler with ‘talking points’ involving the refugee resettlement and the parties discussed Abbott’s lawsuit. It seems bizarre that the feds would discuss legal action with a town mayor operating in the state suing them,” Judicial Watch noted.

Adler, Austin’s mayor since 2014, had publicly proclaimed that Syrian refugees would be welcomed in his city of about 900,000 residents. Adler assures his constituents in the state’s capital city that “any Syrian refugee coming to the United States faces the most stringent background checks of anyone entering the country.”

FBI Assistant Director Michael Steinbach, however, has conceded that the U.S. government has no system to properly screen Syrian refugees.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has confirmed that individuals with ties to terrorist groups in Syria have attempted to infiltrate the United States through the Obama refugee program that has admitted more than 12,000 Syrians.

A recent national poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans oppose accepting Syrian refugees. Just 36 percent said they were in favor of “accepting Syrian refugees into the United States,” the poll found. The figures show a huge decline in support for accepting Syrian refugees in the last year and a half.

Texas and California resettled the overwhelming majority of refugees in 2016, according to federal data, and Texas has absorbed the most Syrians.

Governors in Michigan, Arizona, Illinois, Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Georgia and New Hampshire oppose letting Syrian refugees resettle in their states for security reasons.

At least two of the terrorists who carried out the attack in Paris in November 2015 entered Europe as Syrian refugees, according to French prosecutors, who say the jihadists came through Greece by posing as refugees fleeing from the Syrian conflict.

  Austin Mayor Steve Adler, Gov. Greg Abbott, Judicial Watch, Report: Obama colluded with Austin mayor after Texas sued U.S. to block flow of Syrian refugees, Texas mayor on resettlement of Syrian refugees, WorldTribune.com