For more than 50 years, the governments of Arizona and its Mexican neighboring state, Sonora, have gathered regularly to strike agreements, pledge cooperation and bask in border bonhomie.
But the meeting in Arizona over two days, as border violence and drug trafficking have swelled and the US Senate considers the most significant changes to immigration law in 20 years, a deep sense of urgency, even anxiety, hung over the proceedings.
While describing cooperation between the two states as good, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano said she remained concerned about an increase in drug seizures and the recent spate of violence.
Most alarming, Napolitano said, was a firefight last month among rival drug cartels and the police in the Sonoran city of Cananea, about 160km south of Tucson. Nearly two dozen people were killed.
Such incidents are more typical in border cities near Texas. Although the violence has not usually crossed into the US, Napolitano said in an interview, "you don't want to run that risk, either."
"I hope it is an anomaly," she said, "but I think if it is our goal to have the safest part of the US-Mexican border, then you can't presume that it's an anomaly."
Law enforcement officials have said weapons used in the fighting have come from the US.
Daniel Duran Puente, a spokesman for Sonora Governor Eduardo Bours, said that while "we hope it won't happen again," it was "a sign of what has been happening in the whole country."
Puente said Sonora has been cracking down on organized crime groups, but is seeking more cooperation from the government on drug trafficking intelligence to thwart violence.
At the Arizona-Mexico Commission's meeting, there was the usual signing of agreements between two states that figure prominently in any discussion of the border -- Sonora as the principal staging ground for illegal crossers and Arizona as the state that receives more of them than any other.
To crack down on the financial network that supports human smuggling, Arizona will train Sonora detectives to investigate wire transfers that may be directed to guides, known as coyotes, that bring people over the border.
Arizona officials have claimed success in seizing wire transfers suspected of being used to pay smugglers in their state, but they now believe the money is flowing to Sonora to avoid their efforts.
The two governments also signed agreements to improve radio communication among local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and to more closely track stolen vehicles used in drug and human smuggling on both sides of the border.
Napolitano also met privately with officials from the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Border Patrol, which has been reporting an increase in drug seizures, principally marijuana, in the past year along the Arizona border.
Since October, the Border Patrol has seized 1.4 million kilograms of marijuana, a 71 percent increase over the previous year, in the Tucson sector. Over the same period, arrests of illegal crossers dropped 10 percent, to 270,000 people.
Border Patrol officials have attributed both trends to the presence of thousands of National Guard troops who arrived last summer, deterring crossers while freeing up agents to make drug arrests.
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