An illegal alien has been sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to immigration and identity crimes that enabled him to vote in U.S. elections.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) just provided Border Hawk with details about the case against Carlos Felipe Jaramillo Grajales, a 55-year-old citizen of Colombia who has lived in the U.S. for decades.
Jaramillo Grajales entered the U.S. at an unknown location and date before obtaining a driver’s license using the name of an American citizen in 2003.
He then used the driver’s license, along with a Puerto Rican birth certificate in the name of the same citizen to apply for a U.S. passport, which was issued to him.
“In December 2010, Jaramillo Grajales submitted a Florida Voter Registration Application, identifying himself as the U.S. citizen and affirming that he was a U.S. citizen who had been born in Puerto Rico. The registration was approved and he subsequently voted in several elections, including the election held in Duval County on November 3, 2020,” the Department of Justice says.
Using his stolen American identity, Jaramillo Grajales married an unidentified woman who had arrived to the U.S. on a visitor’s visa in 2003. After his wife became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2017, they divorced in 2020.
Jaramillo Grajales returned to Colombia in 2024, and his ex-wife joined him there shortly after.
They then applied for a K-1 (fiancé) visa for Jaramillo Grajales using his real identity, which was approved.
The couple returned to the U.S., remarried in 2025, and Jaramillo Grajales applied for permanent residence based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen.
Jaramillo Grajales was subsequently arrested during a probe conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, along with the U.S. Department of State’s Diplomatic Security Service and the Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General.
The Colombian pleaded guilty to making false statements in an application for a U.S. passport, aggravated identity theft, falsely claiming that a Social Security number had been assigned to him, and falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen to vote in an election.
U.S. District Judge Harvey E. Schlesinger sentenced Jaramillo Grajales to three years in prison and issued a Judicial Order of Removal directing that he be removed to Colombia.
“This criminal illegal alien from Colombia has just been sentenced to three years in a federal prison for identity theft and falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told Border Hawk.
“Because of his fraud, he was able to obtain a driver’s license and vote in our elections. Thanks to the hard work of the men and women of HSI, along with our federal partners, this criminal is out of our communities and, at the end of his sentence, will be removed from our country. DHS will always fight to protect the integrity of our elections, because election security is national security. Only Americans should be electing American leaders.”
