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Other than fees and the technical know-how what's to stop someone swapping from an open blockchain into Monero or another privacy coin and then back again to sever the links? The blockchain might indicate money went into Monero, and came out of Monero, but Monero says "...".
Liquidity. Monero atomic swaps are better than they used to be, but there simply isn't enough capital around there to operate on a large scale and not suffer from extreme slippage.
And the places that do have liquidity are usually KYCed exchanges, which means uncle Fed knows how much you're swapping and can account for it.
This will improve if we get a sudden demand for privacycoins and the like, but I doubt we'll see much change unless either CDBCs materialize of there's fallout from the TornadoCash lawsuits.
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Monero is fine if your adversary is not that determined or does not have much resources. The feds however have demonstrated some capability at tracing Monero. Criminals do this and they are still caught. They use all sorts of strategies, like you describe, of mixing through Monero, other chains, back to Monero, etc. Of course, we only hear about the guys who get caught. It may be possible there is some way to do it.
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