Gov. Jan Brewer said President Obama told her Thursday that a "majority" of the 1,200 National Guard soldiers he plans to deploy to the Southwest border likely will end up in Arizona.
The governor, who met with the president for about a half hour, said his administration won't provide her with details until later this month.
She also said she specifically told the president the federal government needs to build more fencing along the international border.
"I was not successful," Brewer said afterwards. Nonetheless, she said she was pleased with the outcome.
"I feel it was a successful meeting," said Brewer, who sought the sit-down.
She said much of that is based on the commitment from Obama to keep her in the loop about his plans for the border. That includes details about the 1,200 soldiers and how he plans to use the extra $500 million he wants Congress to approve for border security.
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"We assume that in two weeks we will know exactly how many will be deployed to Arizona," she said.
"The numbers are not fixed from what I understood today. But he felt the majority of all the resources will probably be coming to Arizona. So for that, we are grateful."
The governor said the president was conciliatory in other ways.
"He did concede that they did not respond to my letters in an appropriate manner," Brewer said of messages sent not only to him but also to various federal agencies. Brewer said the president said "they should have responded earlier and didn't, and that would not happen again in the future."
Brewer said the president declined to discuss the possibility the federal government may file its own lawsuit challenging Arizona's tough new immigration law.
It requires police who have stopped people for any other reason to check immigration status if there is reason to believe they are not in this country legally. And it makes being an illegal immigrant a violation of state law.
Obama has said he fears the measure, set to take effect at the end of July, could lead to racial profiling. And the White House, in its own statement on the meeting, said Obama reiterated some concerns, including that having each state enact its own immigration rules "would interfere with the federal government's responsibility to set and enforce immigration policy."
But Brewer said she came away with the impression he would not make any decision on litigation personally.
"He indicated that he was leaving that up to the Department of Justice and did not want to discuss that in any kind of detail today," she said.
The governor has previously said critics of the law either have not read it or do not understand that. But she would not speculate whether that includes Obama.
"He's a well-learned man and a lawyer," she said. "If he has read the law, I'm sure he understands it." The White House said he has.
Brewer said the president discussed his desire for "comprehensive immigration reform."
According to the White House, Obama believes additional enforcement alone won't secure the border. One element of what the president wants would provide a path to legalization of at least some of the 12 million illegal immigrants already in the country, including paying a fine, paying back taxes and learning English.
Brewer said she was skeptical.
"Amnesty was bestowed upon people but we never secured the border," she said, referring to the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, which included a provision that allowed those who had been in this country for a certain period of time to seek legal residency. The Department of Homeland Security said close to 2.7 million illegal immigrants got their "green cards."
"We thought that was going to be the end of it, that the borders were going to be secured and we wouldn't have any more of this illegal immigration," Brewer said.
"It didn't work," the governor said. "So the people are very gun-shy" of new calls for immigration reform.
"The people of Arizona and the people of America want our borders secured. And they're not going to deal, in my opinion, with anything other than border security: the fence, the troops, the additional resources that we need to make sure our borders are secured and that illegal trespassing into the state of Arizona and into America is stopped."
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