NOGALES, Arizona -- It was about 10 p.m. on a frigid Sunday in the Arizona desert when Avelina, a 24-year-old Mexican textile factory worker, heard footsteps and shouting: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents had found her.

The five days she had just spent trekking by foot across rugged terrain to find a way around the U.S. government's new billion-dollar border fence were lost. Instead of heading to meat-packing plants, lettuce fields or factories across the United States, Avelina and fellow migrant travelers were sent to the federal immigration detention facility in Nogales, Arizona, to be booted home.

''The agents told us they almost missed us, but then they saw us on the cameras,'' Avelina recounted recently while locked up with other women. ``Can you imagine? They have cameras in the middle of the mountains!''

That's exactly the message the Border Patrol hopes people like Avelina will spread back to their hometowns: Don't bother; there are too many agents and plenty of cameras.

Unprecedented spending on infrastructure, technology, and thousands more boots on the ground may finally be working. Here in the busy Tucson sector -- which encompasses a third of the U.S.-Mexico border -- 317,000 migrants were apprehended in fiscal year 2008. That's down from 378,000 the year before and 35 percent fewer than just four years ago.

A recent survey by the Mexican government's National Statistics and Geography Institute found that about eight of every 1,000 Mexicans left to live abroad between February and May of this year -- a 42 percent drop from the same period in 2006.

In 2006, the survey found, 1.2 million Mexicans left the country, compared to 814,000 a year later.

That decrease is directly related to enhanced enforcement and infrastructure on the border, agents say. A 10-day trip through both sides of the Arizona border show they might be right.

The wobbling U.S. economy has clearly crushed the immigration dreams of thousands of U.S.-bound migrants, as people hear tales of out-of-work immigrants who can no longer land day jobs in construction. But people who work, live and await passage on the border said the drop in immigration came far before the U.S. recession.

It came, they say, with the fence. Fewer people are making the journey, experts said, and those who for years went back and forth with ease are staying put for fear of getting caught.

''Now you have to walk for eight hours until you find an opening,'' said María de los Angeles, 45, who was caught trying to cross and was sent back to Nogales, Mexico. ``When I am rested, I am going to try again.''

`ONE MORE TIME'

So will Avelina, who spoke on condition that her last name not be published.

''I will try it one more time,'' she said while still in custody. ``You have to be physically, morally and spiritually prepared. The cold and the hunger are hard. But the second time, you know what you will face.''

Congress last year designated $1.2 billion for a 670-mile fence that covers about a third of the U.S.-Mexico border. Rows of 12-foot high steel columns filled with cement are placed deep in the ground in the hopes of dissuading cars, smugglers and migration. Some 400 miles have been completed so far.

Critics say the fence only helped create a billion-dollar industry for smugglers -- known here as coyotes -- who charge higher prices as guides through the treacherous desert.The longer the trip, the more expensive the fee paid by Mexicans, Central Americans and sometimes people from as far as China.

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