ATLANTA — A Georgia official said Thursday the state will not process applications for food stamps and other benefits filed by newly arrived Syrian refugees, possibly setting up a legal showdown.

“We are just going to follow that process as outlined,” Ravae Graham, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Human Services, said in referring to a Nov. 18 memo that outlines her agency’s policy refusing benefits to new refugees from the war-torn country.

A Syrian refugee family of three arrived in the Atlanta area recently and applied for food stamps and Medicaid on Thursday of last week. Mohammad and his wife Ebtesam — who asked that their last names not be published to protect relatives still living in Syria — have not heard whether their applications for themselves and their four-year-old son Hasan would be processed, said Joshua Sieweke, the Atlanta office director for World Relief, which is helping them resettle in the Atlanta area. Graham declined to comment on their specific applications Thursday, citing privacy reasons.

Last month, Gov. Nathan Deal joined more than two dozen of his counterparts in moving to halt the resettlement of Syrian refugees in their states. They have raised security concerns in the wake of the terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on Nov. 13. Under pressure to do more as Syria’s four-year-old civil war rages on, President Barack Obama is pledging the U.S. will take in 10,000 refugees from that country over the next year.

Read more in the Atlanta Journal Constitution