By Louie Gilot
El Paso Times
Thursday, December 15, 2005

A Nebraska woman tried to sneak two Mexican children into the United States at the Paso del Norte Bridge just before midnight Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection officials said.

Tracy Dawn Mann, 23, of Elk Creek, Neb., told bridge inspectors that the two children asleep in the 1997 Mazda Protege she was driving were her children and that they were U.S. citizens. Officials said she had a U.S. birth certificate for the 5-year-old girl but no identification for the 3-year-old boy.

The woman eventually admitted the children were undocumented immigrants. She said they belonged to her sister-in-law and she was supposed to deliver them to Nebraska. Mann was arrested on alien smuggling charges and the children were returned to family members in Juárez.