Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said she has won promises from President Barack Obama for better cooperation on immigration issues and border security, but failed to make any headway on the state's new tough immigration law.
"Today I'm farther ahead than I was yesterday," Brewer, a Republican who has been thrust into the national spotlight as the immigration issue heats up, told reporters after the meeting at the White House, according to The Washington Times.
Brewer said Obama promised to send administration officials to Arizona within a couple of weeks to work out details of the president's plan to deploy up to 1,200 National Guard troops on the U.S.-Mexico border. Brewer said she expects most of those troops will go to Arizona, which is ground-zero for the flow of illegal immigrants coming into the country.
But the governor said Obama would not discuss whether the administration will sue to block Arizona's new immigration law, which requires police to check the legal status of anyone they encounter during regular stops or checks who they suspect may be in the country illegally.
Brewer said the president told her he's leaving decisions about challenging the law up to the Justice Department, and wouldn't speak about his concerns, the Times reported just after teh meeting concluded.
The law specifically prohibits racial profiling, but Obama has said he still fears the measure could violate civil rights and lead to racial profiling.
Brewer, who in April signed a tough new law that allows Arizona law enforcement personnel to check the immigration status of people reasonably suspected to be in the country illegally, only found out Wednesday that she would be seeing the president.
The governor is in town for a meeting of the Council of Governors, a 10-person panel Mr. Obama appointed her to in January that advises the president on homeland security.
Brewer had said she looked forward to seeing the president face-to-face and making her case for beefed-up federal involvement in Arizona’s difficult border situation, where kidnapping, drug trafficking, and continuing illegal immigration have heightened a sense of crisis in the state.
“I think it's important to not only the state of Arizona but to all of America that we are able to tell him exactly what is taking place down there in Arizona and that we need to have our borders secured,” Brewer told Fox News Wednesday night. “And we need to have the federal government do their job.”
Brewer had indicated that she would bring several aides with her to the meeting, including outside legal counsel – not the attorney general of Arizona, who does not support the law. Critics, including Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder, have said that Arizona's law – which goes into effect July 29 – will lead to racial profiling and could in fact lead to an increase in crime as people fear cooperating with police lest they face problems over their immigration status.
Brewer expressed chagrin that Attorney General Holder has not reached out to her since she signed the law in late April. She also seemed unperturbed at the prospect of legal challenges, either from the American Civil Liberties Union or the Obama administration. The Justice Department is considering a lawsuit, but has yet to announce action.
“We are prepared to defend [the law] all the way to the Supreme Court,” Brewer said.
The Arizona governor described what she called an intolerable situation in her state. “We're tired of this illegal trespassing into the state of Arizona and moving through the rest of the United States,” she said, adding that the costs associated with illegal immigration are unaffordable.
“You know, when you think about it, incarceration, when you think of education, when you think of health, you know, it's awful,” she said. “The kidnap capital of the world is Phoenix because of the drop-houses, the drug cartels. ... We can't tolerate it.”
Obama has indicated that he will send 1,200 National Guard troops to the region, but Brewer says she has not received details from the White House as to where they will be deployed. Obama has also asked Congress for an additional $500-plus million for border security.
In a small way, Obama has no one to blame but himself for this flareup over immigration, one of the toughest public policy issues of our time. When he took office and nominated then-Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to the post of Homeland Security secretary, that put then-Arizona Secretary of State Brewer in line to become the next governor. Ms. Napolitano had vetoed similar anti-illegal immigration legislation repeatedly as governor, and it came as no surprise that the legislature would tee up the same sort of bill for the new conservative Republican governor, who would be more inclined to sign it than was her predecessor.
In her Fox interview, Brewer said she’s had only one conversation with Napolitano since taking office – and that was more than a year ago.
“She called us and indicated a little bit about what her intentions were as far as homeland security,” Brewer said.
Brewer's understanding is that Napolitano will not be at Thursday’s meeting, which begins at 1:30 p.m.
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