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I'd argue your example, shows why fixing the demand is actually the only real solution. If there is demand for narcotics, someone will provide it. If there is demand for illegal low paid labor, someone will find a way to provide that too.
Enforcement cannot solve either problem. You have to fundamentally change the demand (or accept the demand as not that bad and legalize it, but we'll take that off the table for now).
No matter how many suppliers you arrest, there will be more. That applies to suppliers of illegal drugs or illegal workers. I would argue that the only effective solution to fix the demand problem. Going after cartels has notably entirely failed to fix the issue. Smugglers will always find a way. The War on Drugs has cost billions upon billions and I could still buy pretty much anything I want on street corners. The War on Drugs is a failure, a War on Illegal Immigration would fail just as hard.
The demand is why there is an issue at all. That is the thing that must be removed. The problem for drugs is that this basically cannot be done. I think you could do it for immigration, but it would involve heavily clamping down on businesses, particularly farms et al.
The war on drugs is a failure because its being waged on a scale that's way too large using means that are completely ineffective. And that's only if we are assuming that the 'War on Drugs' existed as advertised.
A very simple contradictory example to the frame you're proposing is to look at 'legal' drug manufacturing processes and recognize how easily they can manufacture 'demand'. Case in point being the opioid epidemic. With that understood we can also recognize how easily the US government could end that entire manufacture and distribution process via nothing more than legislation and a few dozen FBI raids.
Opioid based pain killers don't need to exist on the scale they do. The demand wasn't for them specifically just like the demand for any drug isn't drug specific. People wanted pain relief and escapism. People wanted a good time. You can give most people all of that without completely destroying their lives. The path of least resistance towards peoples wants and needs isn't always the best. And I think it would behoove everyone to recognize that and aim to increase the resistance on some paths to prohibit as many people as possible from taking them. That goes for cheap drugs as well as cheap labour.
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