A US citizen on Tuesday pleaded guilty to helping migrants from Canada illegally sneak into the United States. As per the Department of Justice, the woman was caught while “smuggling” four men through the US-Canada border.
Based on an official statement from the US Justice Department, the 43-year-old woman, identified as Stacey Taylor, was stopped in New York, where officials found four men inside the car with her.
“Agents then determined the four men, three from India and one from Canada, were illegal aliens and had just crossed the U.S.-Canadian border illegally, without inspection, in the freezing cold,” said the department.
As per officials, these four men crossed into the US on foot and met with Taylor near Churubusco, New York, where the 43-year-old drove them further into the county.
However, officials added that the “smuggling” of these four men revealed that Taylor had been involved in multiple other “human smuggling events.”
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“Following her January 2025 arrest, she was subsequently stopped in a suspected alien smuggling venture in August 2025 and was again implicated in alien smuggling in September 2025,” said the Justice Department.
Taylor pleads guilty
As per the US Justice Department, Taylor pleaded guilty to the crime and admitted that she was smuggling migrants from across the border for a profit.
The 43-year-old woman faces a minimum of upto five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced on December 3, 2026.
“A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors,” the statement added further.
Before Taylor, in July 2025, another woman was caught in the act by officials. 53-year-old Stephanie Square, a US-Canadian citizen, pleaded guilty to smuggling migrants across the border.
As per court documents, Square was the leader of a human smuggling organisation that trafficked migrants across the US-Canada border.
Square’s cases focused on the death of five people, including two kids under three years old, in the St. Lawrence River in March 2023.
As per the DOJ, a Romanian couple and their two children were to be brought into the US across the river.