Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey dines with Trump at White House, border security on the menu

Corrections & Clarifications: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of governors at the dinner whose states border Mexico. Ducey and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez both attended.

Gov. Doug Ducey dined at the White House on Monday evening, joining other governors for a discussion of border security with President Donald Trump.

Video of a portion of the dinner, released by the White House, showed Trump at the head of a table in the Blue Room with Ducey seated to the president's right.

Ducey thanked Trump for the invitation to the White House and thanked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who sat at the opposite end of the table from Trump, for visiting Arizona in April.

While there, Ducey told Trump, Nielsen was able to see "how wide open and unprotected our border is in southern Arizona and the flow of not only illegal drugs but human trafficking that comes over that border."

After Ducey, Trump introduced the four other governors invited to dinner. All are Republicans.

They were Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, Gov. Phil Bryant of Mississippi, Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina and Gov. Susana Martinez of New Mexico.

Of the five, only Ducey and Martinez govern states that share a border with Mexico.

Trump said the group, which also included Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen would be discussing the crime and drugs "pouring across our border."

Trump said that border crossings were "down over 40 percent" despite what he said were the nation's weak immigration laws. It was not immediately clear what time frame he was referring to.

Last month, Trump called out the National Guard from Arizona and other border states to boost border security.

"We’ve been able to do what I think nobody else has been able to do," he said.

On Monday afternoon, a post on Ducey's Twitter feed showed a photo of him and Martinez meeting with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The post said the governors were discussing security on the border with Mexico.

Ducey endorsed Trump's National Guard plan

In April, Ducey endorsed a plan from Trump to deploy National Guard troops to the border.

The action came after Trump, in a series of posts on Twitter, expressed alarm about a caravan of migrants from Central America who made a planned protest march to the United States border to apply for asylum.

It was a demonstration held every year, but coverage of the caravan on Fox News prompted Trump to complain on social media that the country was the target of a planned invasion and said it needed to be stopped.

The next day, Trump called for the deployment of National Guard troops on the border.

Ducey supported the move, saying such action from Washington D.C. officials was welcome. Within days, he went to the Papago Park base to see off the first wave of what would become 338 troops deployed to the Mexico-border area.

Ducey said that the caravan was not necessarily the reason Trump called for the troops’ deployment. He pointed to statistics, also touted by the Department of Homeland Security, that showed a 203 percent year-over-year increase of migrant crossings.

Border experts said that those statistics, while accurate, also reflected a historic dip in crossings from 2017, in Trump’s first months in office.

Ducey: Troops on border 'needed,' 'welcomed'

In an op-ed published April 9 in USA TODAY, Ducey said Trump’s call for troops on the border was both “needed and welcomed.” 

Ducey wrote that Arizona did not have the luxury of playing politics with the issue. ”Instead, while the politicos and pundits are busy shouting at each other,” he said, “we are addressing the challenges of managing a state on the border.”

Ducey visited the White House in February 2017 to join Trump and other governors for a discussion of health care. That was the same topic for discussion when Ducey visited the White House in August, meeting with other governors and Trump administration officials.

Following Monday's dinner, Ducey was scheduled to travel to New York for the Republican Governors Association conference, his office said.

On Wednesday, he is scheduled to be in Atlanta where he leads the delegation making the state's bid for the 2023 Super Bowl at a meeting of National Football League team owners.

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