Has the recent government and citizen-backed crackdown on illegal immigration near the Mexican border resulted in fewer border crossings? There seems to be conflicting evidence on that question, but as the Associated Press/Salon.com reports, one definite effect of the recent crackdowns is that Mexicans looking to enter the U.S. are increasingly turning to smugglers to help them cross into the U.S. and this increase has intensified an already tense situation:

Toughened U.S. border enforcement has prompted substantially more illegal immigrants to hire smugglers to help them cross over from Mexico -- and competition among sophisticated criminal networks for customers has spawned violence and sometimes death. Evidence comes from tens of thousands of interviews of illegal border crossers in surveys by a Mexican government-funded research institution, which were analyzed by The Associated Press. . . .

AP’s examination of the sweeping data found the use of smugglers on the rise among those surveyed. The interviewees were border crossers who returned to Mexico within three years or were caught and kicked out by the Border Patrol. About half of those surveyed in 2005 said they had hired a smuggler. That compared to about 1 in 3 in 2004 and just 1 in 6 in 2000. The actual percentage of illegal immigrants who hire smugglers may be even higher than what the AP analysis found. That’s because people may hesitate to admit they hired someone to commit a crime. And the survey excludes those who made it across and remain in the United States. . . .

Critics say the border crackdown isn’t working, that the U.S. government’s own estimates suggest the number of illegal immigrants here grew by 2 million between 2000 and 2005 to 10.5 million people. The big winners, they say, are the smugglers. “It has turned a modestly lucrative business into a fantastically profitable industry,” said Wayne Cornelius, an immigration expert at the University of California, San Diego.

I suppose each side will find parts of this particular trend useful in supporting their arguments -- the illegal immigration critics will tout that its efforts at discouraging such border crossings are paying off while supporters of undocumented aliens will argue that such efforts are only intensifying the desperation that many Mexicans feel.

In other words, the war over illegal immigration continues to rage, but is moving to different battlefields and incorporating different weapons.