PHOENIX (Reuters) - Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano held talks with law enforcement officials on Friday at a Border Patrol station in Arizona that saw one of its agents shot dead near the border with Mexico on Tuesday.

Napolitano, a former Arizona governor, also planned to meet with the family of slain Border Patrol agent Nicholas Ivie during her visit, Homeland Security spokesman Matt Chandler said. All the meetings were expected to be private.

Ivie, 30, was one of three Border Patrol agents who responded to a tripped ground sensor in a well-known smuggling corridor near the tiny border town of Naco. Ivie was killed and another agent was wounded. The third was unharmed.

Mexican officials have said two men were arrested in a military operation near the city of Agua Prieta, a few miles across the border from the shooting scene. U.S. authorities have declined comment on the arrests and released few details about the shootings.

Ivie was the fourth Border Patrol agent to die in violent circumstances in less than two years in Arizona, heightening concern about border security in a state at the forefront of the national immigration debate.

Police and U.S. agents responded to an area about 5 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border before daybreak on Tuesday after the Border Patrol reported an agent had been shot. The Border Patrol tried to apprehend two suspects but they fled to Mexico, a local sheriff's official said.

(Editing by Dan Whitcomb, Cynthia Johnston and Jim Loney)