BANGOR (AP) – A South Carolina man who tried to smuggle his Canadian fiance into the U.S. in the trunk of his car faces three weeks in jail and the prospect of a long separation from the woman he planned to marry.

The sentence imposed Thursday in U.S. District Court on Martin Ellis Crossno, 33, of Union, S.C., was identical to the one that the judge handed to Dora Arlene Sauveur, 35, of Amherst, Nova Scotia, in August.

The couple were arrested at the Houlton border crossing July 19, five days after Sauveur was denied entry to the U.S. for overstaying her visit the previous year.

Crossno told the court that he planned to move to Canada to marry Sauveur because she has been barred from entering the U.S. for 20 years.

But Judge John Woodcock suggested that Crossno, now a convicted felon, would likely be barred under Canadian law from moving across the border.

“The irony of this case,” the judge said, “is that you and your fiancee may be forced … to be apart.”

Sauveur left her husband and two sons and entered the U.S. on Mother’s Day 2004 when she went to North Carolina to live with a man she met over the Internet. After that relationship ended, she moved in with Crossno, whom she also met online.