SASABE, Mexico -- It wasn't so long ago that thousands of passers-by would spend a couple of days on a bus to swarm into this cow town in the heart of the Sonora Desert.

It was the final stop on the frontier on the way to el Norte, the last place to stock up on Gatorade.

Thanks to the crackdown on illegal immigration, Sasabe is now a ghost town.

''I did not have enough chairs here to seat everybody,'' Horacio Aguirre, a waiter at the Pollo Feliz restaurant said, recalling the 2002 to 2006 boom years. ``People used to sit on the counters to eat. They would buy all the soda cans to take on their trip. I'm the only one working here now.''

EERIE SILENCE

Sasabe is an old Mexican cattle town, just a step away from the U.S.-side of the border, where a couple of ranch families made their living off firewood. Even now, the only thing that breaks the eerie silence is the sound of the occasional pickup driving by with a load of wood, kicking up dust on the unpaved roads.

A decade ago, it became the town immigration built. Its population swelled to more than 2,000 as people moved here to make money off of other people's dreams. When the United States first began enforcing border restrictions in places like California and Texas, Sasabe became the spot where smugglers would gather their payload -- Mexicans, Central Americans, and migrants from other far-flung lands.

The migrants rested there before heading on foot across miles of desert to reach U.S. soil undetected. They paid around $2,000 a piece, depending on how much they were forced to walk and their final destination.

Border experts say a good 70 percent of the community made a living off the estimated 2,000 people who arrived daily, particularly in the peak months from January to May. Vans driving in from Altar, 70 miles south, filed in all day as flophouses spread.

''Everything that was for sale in this town was sold,'' Aguirre said. ``The people who sold clothes sold. The people who sold food, sold. There was a good economy.''

He said it all changed about a year ago when the U.S. government's $1.2 billion fence separating the United States from Mexico went up. Suddenly the north side of the border was swarming with U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents and immigration -- particularly through Sasabe -- took a nose dive.

The U.S. Border Patrol says there are now 3,100 agents in the Tucson district, up from 1,000 in 1998. The number of people caught crossing is down 16 percent.

Sasabe went bust.

Pollo Feliz once sold 100 chickens a day. Now they are lucky if they roast 20.

''You saw people driving by in new cars. Now you see those same people walking,'' said Mari Cruz, who works at La Perla Hotel. ``The situation is really bad. There are no factories here, no places to work. We just had immigration.''

EMPTY ROOMS

Cruz makes a $3 commission on every room she rents and cleans. In the good old days of mass migration, she could rent the same room once in the morning and again in the afternoon to a fresh group of migrants ready to cross.

''I remember seeing those people with their faces full of illusion,'' she said. ``These days, all the hotels in Sasabe are equally empty.''

Both Cruz and Aguirre said they hope all is not lost: President-elect Barack Obama could make changes that will bring the town back to life, whether that means amnesty for immigrants or a kick start to the economy.

Miguel Sánchez, who runs the general store, said he used to travel to the United States legally three times a week to buy inventory. Now he goes every two weeks.

Although he and others acknowledged that the U.S. economy helped grind business to a halt, they said the slowdown came way before the recession on the north side of the fence.

''Why is business so bad? That fence right there,'' Sánchez said, tilting his head toward the 12-foot high steel columns that now separates his town from the United States.

``But I have relatives up there, and they say it's the same up there as it is here. Why do you think I don't go?''

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