TORONTO - Canadian and American authorities say the breakup of a huge Chinese migrant smuggling ring in Central Canada has done little to stop the business of trafficking people.

Police estimate the smugglers ferried more than 100 Chinese nationals halfway around the globe each month.

• INDEPTH: Chinese Immigrants
  

It was the biggest bust of its kind.

When U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno announced the arrests last December she said the bust had "crippled another smuggling syndicate that sought to profit in human misery."

It was a multi-million-dollar business.

Police estimate the smugglers ferried more than 100 Chinese nationals halfway around the globe each month.

But the numbers of illegal migrants caught at the border haven't changed much since then.

Law enforcement officials said they recently nabbed dozens of illegal migrants trying to cross into the U.S. near Windsor, Ont.

Paid smugglers have been helping the migrants slip across the border in the Lake St. Clair area, officials told CBC News.

And off Canada's west coast, RCMP Const. Marie Claude Arsenault has watched the shiploads of Chinese migrants arrive. She says the police haven't been able to do much about the problem.

"I see that we haven't had a great impact because they found other means of coming to Canada, because they were still coming by boat at the time when we were investigating those peoples," Arsenault told CBC News.

"It just keeps going. There's a lot of money to be made."

American officials agree.

"Any time you dismantle one organization there's always individuals willing to step up into that vacuum and start the criminal activity anew," said Michael Gilhooly of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

As for the biggest bust in history, half of the suspected smugglers have pleaded guilty in the United States -- the latest entered a plea just last week.

In Canada, no pleas have been entered and no suspects are even close to going on trial.