Paris Attacks Could Bolster Congressional Efforts to Block U.S. Refugee Plan

Repercussions from the Paris attacks will ripple through Congress as lawmakers return on Monday and begin to weigh in from the floors of the Senate and the House.

Within hours of the violence, it was clear that the terror assaults would complicate the administration’s push to allow up to 10,000 Syrian refugees into the United States after a Syrian passport was found near the body of one of the attackers.

Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates urged an immediate halt to the resettlement effort, saying the United States does not have the capability to make certain that terrorists allied with the Islamic State do not slip into the country along with those legitimately fleeing the tumult in the region.

“There’s no possible way to screen them,” Representative Devin Nunes, the California Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“It should be stopped immediately,” he said. “Look, we feel for these refugees, but the bottom line, if you don’t want refugees, then you have to go into Iraq and Syria and defeat ISIS.”

Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has been pushing for the year-end spending package now being assembled to prohibit the administration from spending any money to admit Syrian refugees until the intelligence community approves the process.

The White House indicated on Sunday that it intended to move ahead with the refugee program, and top Democrats in the Senate had been pushing back against Mr. Grassley’s proposal before the Paris attacks. But the new developments are likely to make many Democrats more cautious about lending strong support to the refugee plan and perhaps provide momentum for Mr. Grassley’s proposal.