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It wasn't adequately enforced. Southern (and even northern) juries generally refused to convict captured slave traders, even though the practice was legally considered piracy.

The first and, I believe, only slave trader executed was in NYC after Lincoln was president and war had broken out.

You bring up a really good point. How effective was the ban at preventing imports?

Turns out it's real difficult to find data. One source I ran across claimed 1.2M were imported from 1808 to 1860, which is ludicrous, as it would mean 2.5x more were imported after the ban than in the centuries it was legal.

It would also require an average of something like 500 to 1000 slave ships a year, which seems really, really high. Smuggling people isn't like smuggling cocaine, they're pretty bulky.

Crews of naval ships that captured slave traders got instantly rich, so they had a real incentive. Somebody who informed on a smuggler of 100 slaves would be paid $5000, which was something like 10x a year's income for most families. Pretty big incentive to rat a slaver out. OTOH, a cargo of 400 slaves in 1860 would have been worth something like $300l to $400k, which is nothing to sneeze at even in today's money.

Update: Found another source that claims that no more than 10,000 and probably many fewer slaves were smuggled in after the ban. Pretty good article.

http://abolition.nypl.org/print/us_constitution/