Lauren Villagran

EL PASO TIMES

COLUMBUS, N.M. ― She doesn't carry a passport and she doesn't bother with a visa, but Camilla crosses the U.S. Mexico border just about every day on three-inch legs, ears flapping.

The border-crossing wiener dog certainly doesn't need the services of a coyote smuggler. She knows just where she is going and how to get there.

Nearly every weekday morning she walks her 8- and 9-year-old neighbors, Daylín and Malcolm Meza, from the small Mexican town of Palomas to the school bus stop in the even smaller town of Columbus, New Mexico.

That requires going through an official U.S. Customs and Border Protection port of entry.

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Through an open door in the rust-colored steel fence, down a wide sidewalk, Camila dodges the skinny legs of hundreds of elementary students, all U.S. citizens, who make the cross-border trek to school each day.

"She crosses without papers," says Cristina Coronado, the Dachshund's owner and mother of a 4-year-old daughter who attends preschool in Columbus. "She crosses with the neighbors then crosses again to meet us. Everyone knows her as la perra salchicha," the "hot dog dog."

The third- and fourth-graders giggle as Camila slathers them with slobbery kisses while they wait for the school buses to arrive in a dirt lot. Many of the children cross the border without their parents, and Camila is a dedicated — if not especially fierce -— protector.

Unless she gets distracted lapping at an egg burrito tossed to the curb or pawing in a mud puddle, which happens.

Camila is cinnamon-colored and curious. She wears a worn black collar without a tag.

When the bright yellow buses pull up to the sidewalk, the children form a line and Camila takes her place, too.

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"Sometimes she even gets on the bus with us," said DaylÍn Meza, nuzzling the pup.

"She did get on the bus once," said Roberto DÍaz, a father seeing his daughter off to school.

"But she didn't have a pencil, so we couldn't let her stay," he said with a chuckle.

Officially, CBP maintains that all dogs entering the country must show proof of a rabies vaccination.

Whether Camila has ever proved her paperwork — or her country of origin, which remains in question — isn't clear. Being a Dachsund, she comes from German stock.

No matter. Camila is a savvy international traveler — and she's long and thin enough to squeeze through the border wall if she wants to.

When the Meza kids board the bus, Camila pokes around the port of entry for a bit before another neighbor who knows her scoops her up and carries her back over the border.

She'll rest her little legs before her next cross-border trek, maybe tomorrow.

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Lauren Villagran covers the border and can be reached at lvillagran@elpasotimes.com.