President Obama intends to meet with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Thursday, a White House official told FoxNews.com, after criticism mounted over the president’s refusal to meet her while she is in Washington this week.
Brewer had requested a face-to-face meeting with Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano — a former Arizona governor — as tensions rise between his administration and the state over its controversial law clamping down on illegal immigrants.
White House spokesman Adam Abrams had said over the weekend that Obama’s schedule “doesn’t allow for a meeting” with Brewer but added that the president “does intend to sit down with the governor in the future.”
The apparent snub came after Justice Department officials told Arizona’s attorney general and aides to the governor Friday that the federal government has serious reservations about the state’s new immigration law.
Arizona state Senator Russell Pearce, a Republican who helped draft Arizona’s new laws, called Obama’s refusal to meet with Brewer “an insult.”
“He’s willing to have a beerfest with an officer in Cambridge after he misspoke,” Pearce told Fox News on Tuesday, referring to a photo-op the president held last summer after he incited a feud over the bias of a police officer who arrested a black professor at the front door to his home.
“He misspoke on this bill also and he’s not willing to meet with the governor of the state of Arizona?” Pearce said.
Obama has blasted Arizona’s immigration law, which takes effect July 29, as “misguided” and warned that it could violate civil rights and lead to racial profiling.
The White House has indicated that it’s prepared to go to court if necessary in a bid to block the new law, which makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.