Joining her colleagues in Tennessee and Roanoke, Rhode Island state Senator Elaine Morgan (R) says Syrian refugees should be isolated in "segregated" camps.
Morgan suggested: “If we need to take these people in we should set up [a] refugee camp to keep them segregated from our populous.” She said, “I think the protection of our US citizens and the United States of America should be the most important issue here.”
Expanding on the point Wednesday, Morgan said: “We have veterans in the streets starving, alcoholics, drug addicts. I can see taking [Syrian refugees] in, but keeping them all centralized – it sounds a little barbaric, but we need to centralize them and keep them in one central area.”
It "sounds a little barbaric" but them's the breaks.
To be clear, refugees are granted asylum inside the United States, not individual states. Once someone has been granted refuge, they're free to move about just as everyone else is. Individual states do not have the authority to collect individuals who've been granted asylum and herd them into camps.
Doing what various lawmakers have called for wouldn't just be a ethically heinous, it would be unconstitutional.