“There has been a decrease in apprehensions at the border, which points to the fact that fewer people are crossing the border,” says Pew's Ms. Cohn.
In 2005, more than 1 million Mexicans were taken into custody trying to cross the US border. By 2011, that number decreased by more than 70 percent.
Meanwhile, deportations of illegal Mexican immigrants have jumped sharply. In 2010, nearly 400,000 unauthorized immigrants were deported – 73 percent of them Mexicans.
One million Mexicans said they returned from the US between 2005 and 2010, according to a new dem-ographic study of Mexican census data. That's three times the number who said they'd returned in the previous five-year period.
And they aren't just home for a visit: One prominent sociologist in the US has counted "net zero" migration for the first time since the 1960s.