WASHINGTON, United States, (AFP) – The United States promised Thursday to do more to combat arms smuggling with Mexico, which said that early efforts have succeeded in denting the country’s long dire homicide rate.

Top officials from the neighboring nations met in Washington after also sealing a deal that would keep in Mexico most of the Venezuelan migrants seeking to enter the United States, an arrangement that drew criticism from some usual allies of President Joe Biden.

Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said the two nations worked together to seize 32,000 weapons this year and credited the effort with a 9.2 per cent drop in homicides inside his country.

“These are not just statistics. We’re talking about saving lives,” Ebrard said.

“There is still a ways to go; this doesn’t mean everything is solved. But the most important indicator is that for the first time in the past few years we have seen a reduction not just in homicides but kidnappings, robberies and vehicle theft.”

The cooperation is part of a so-called Bicentennial Framework sealed a year ago to mark two centuries of diplomatic relations.

US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the two countries would set up a new task force to see “what more we can do to counter this problem.”

“We will be unrelenting in our attack of it,” he told a news conference.

Mexico has long pointed the finger at the United States and its lax gun laws for the flow of weapons to its cartels, which in turn are often funded by selling drugs to US consumers.

Mexico on Monday filed its latest lawsuit in a US court, seeking action against an Arizona gun seller accused of working with smugglers.

Mindful of political sensitivities in the United States, where the rival Republican Party champions the right to bear arms, Mayorkas stressed that the two countries were working only against transnational smuggling and not on domestic gun policy.