A non-governmental resettlement agency had planned to send the family of three, selected from a UN refugee camp in the Middle East and vetted by US security agencies, to start a new life in Indianapolis.
But after Indiana's Governor Mike Pence joined the two dozen state leaders refusing to accept Syrians for fear that violent Islamist infiltrators are concealed among them, the agency re-directed them to Connecticut yesterday.
Spokesman John Kirby said the US State Department respected the NGO's decision to re-route the family, but made it clear that the federal government did not agree with state governments blocking refugee settlement.
"So, is it optimal to re-route based on concerns expressed by one or other state? No, that's not."
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Kirby said the US mood had changed because of a "very strident and in some cases hyperbolic reaction" to last week's murderous attacks in Paris, and defended the vetting process that potential refugees undergo.
Some 187 Syrians have been admitted to the United States since the start of the fiscal year on October 1, a tiny fraction of the 10,000 President Barack Obama has said he wants to admit over the 12-month period.
"The program has admitted 785,000 refugees in the 14 years since 9/11," Kirby said.
"Of those, only about a dozen have been arrested or removed from the United States due to terrorism concerns that existed prior to their resettlement in the United States. And none of them were Syrian.