Amarillo - Site of Muhammad Moghaddam "Workplace Violence" Shooting - Has "the country’s highest ratio of refugees from Middle East nations"

Eid al-Adha at Amarillo YMCA

I put the last part in quotations because I couldn't verify it. Breitbart made the claim in January but it was disputed by the Texas Observer. What is not in dispute is that Amarillo has a very high rate of refugee resettlement--the highest per capita in Texas, and almost double the rate of Fort Worth, the next highest in the state.

And if you Google "Amarillo refugees," you'll see that it has now become ground zero in the refugee resettlement wars.

The Walmart shooter,  Muhammad Moghaddam, emmigrated from Iran eight years ago. According to the Observer, over 2,700 refugees have been resettled in Amarillo in the last five years, equal to 1.3% of the population. Another source puts the total since 2002 at 5,251 or 2.5% of the population.

The anti-resettlement side points out that Amarillo now has the fifth-highest crime rate in the state--a rate much higher than other comparable cities of 200,000 population.

It also now has the highest per capita rate of reported rapes.

Karen Sherman, a former Amarillo resident who now lives in Missoula, Montana has become an anti-resettlement activist:

“Our city is failing because of the refugees. We have 22 different languages spoken in our schools. We’ve got 42 languages being fielded by our 9-1-1 call centers, and crime is just through the roof. We need to exercise caution, especially for the sake of our children,” she said.