Crackdown leads to drop in illegal immigration

Smugglers losing money
Francisco Loureiro, who runs a migrant shelter in Nogales, said that when migrants began arriving in January, the start of the high season, he spotted smugglers trying to drum up business inside his shelter.

Now, local police visit the shelter three times a night.

"The officers have found smugglers carrying guns and even drugs," Loureiro said.

During earlier peak traffic seasons, overflowing vans and pickups would arrive in Sasabe and then head out to the drop-off points where migrants begin their long walk. The town of 1,500 people could see its population triple from migrants passing through.

Now businesses are closing and at least six safe houses and hotels have been left unfinished, said town administrator Ramona Flores. Border experts estimate that 70 percent of residents earn their living from migration.

On a recent afternoon, only eight men waited for their smuggler near a pile of smashed and rusting cars.

"We're supposed to be in high season, but in one day the most we've seen is between 300 and 400 migrants," Flores said.

Juan Luna, a 39-year-old bricklayer from Guanajuato state, said he was heading to Oklahoma, where he would work as a dishwasher at a restaurant. But after two nights of walking through the desert, he and five others from his town were caught.

"The United States is where those without resources go," Luna said at the Nogales bus station, where he was waiting to return home. "That was a little door we still had open. But they are closing it, and now we don't know what we will do."

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