A 55-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia stole an American citizen's Social Security number, used it to obtain a passport and register to vote, then cast ballots in the 2020 election and several others, and a federal court just handed him three years in prison.
Carlos Felipe Jaramillo-Grajales was sentenced this week on four federal charges: making false statements in a passport application, aggravated identity theft, falsely claiming a Social Security number, and falsely claiming U.S. citizenship to vote. A deportation order will send him back to Colombia once he finishes his sentence, the Department of Justice announced.
The case lays bare a chain of fraud that stretched across more than two decades and exploited nearly every layer of the federal immigration and identification system, from Social Security to the passport office to the voter rolls.
Jaramillo-Grajales took an American citizen's Social Security number and built a false identity around it. He used the stolen number to secure a U.S. passport. He then used it again to claim American citizenship while obtaining a Florida driver's license.
That license opened the next door. Jaramillo-Grajales registered to vote and cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election. He also voted in what DOJ officials described as "several other elections," though the exact number and years have not been disclosed.
Every one of those votes was cast by a person who had no legal right to be in the country, let alone choose its leaders. And every one diluted the ballot of a lawful citizen. The administration has made clear that noncitizen voting will carry real criminal consequences going forward.
The identity theft also had a flesh-and-blood victim, an unnamed American whose Social Security number was hijacked. No details have been released about how or when that person learned the number had been stolen, or what damage the theft caused beyond the fraud itself.
The timeline of Jaramillo-Grajales's movements tells its own story about the gaps in the system he exploited.
An unnamed foreign national, who later became his wife, arrived in the United States in September 2003 on a B visitor visa. She secured naturalized American citizenship in August 2017. Jaramillo-Grajales married her at some point during that span, using the stolen identity.
The couple divorced in January 2020. After the split, Jaramillo-Grajales left the country for Colombia, traveling under the stolen Social Security number. His ex-wife also returned to Colombia.
Then came the brazen part. The ex-wife applied for a fiancé visa on behalf of Jaramillo-Grajales, this time under his real name. The visa was approved. He flew back into the United States as himself, the same person who had spent years inside the country under a fraudulent identity.
In June 2025, the pair remarried. Jaramillo-Grajales then applied for a green card. Whether that application is still pending, denied, or withdrawn has not been disclosed. Nor has the DOJ said whether the ex-wife faces any charges for her role in facilitating his return.
Cases like this one sit alongside a broader pattern of illegal immigrants committing serious crimes on American soil. A recent case in California involved a judge releasing an illegal immigrant just one day before he allegedly killed a retiree, a grim reminder of what lax enforcement can cost.
U.S. Attorney Gregory Kehoe framed the prosecution as a straightforward matter of enforcing the law:
"Federal immigration laws serve to safeguard our nation's borders and protect the integrity of our government. Those who seek to circumvent, exploit, or break these laws will be prosecuted fully."
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin went further, tying the case directly to election integrity. Mullin noted that Jaramillo-Grajales's fraud allowed him to obtain a driver's license and vote, and credited Homeland Security Investigations agents for the work that led to the conviction.
Mullin stated:
"DHS will always fight to protect the integrity of our elections, because election security is national security. Only Americans should be electing American leaders."
The secretary added that Jaramillo-Grajales would be removed from the country at the end of his sentence. The enforcement posture aligns with the administration's broader crackdown, which has produced thirteen consecutive months of zero border releases, a record that would have been unthinkable under the previous administration.
For all the clarity of the sentence, the case raises questions the DOJ has not yet answered. The specific federal court and district where Jaramillo-Grajales was sentenced have not been named publicly. No case number or docket has been released. And the number of elections beyond 2020 in which he voted remains vague, "several" is not a number.
Equally unclear is how long the fraud went undetected. The source does not say when Jaramillo-Grajales first entered the United States or how he obtained the stolen Social Security number. Nor does it explain what triggered the investigation. He managed to acquire a passport, a driver's license, and voter registration, all using someone else's identity, before anyone caught on.
Michigan recently brought charges against five noncitizens for illegal voting in the 2024 election, suggesting that the Jaramillo-Grajales case is not an isolated incident but part of a wider enforcement push that is finally treating noncitizen voting as the crime it is.
Meanwhile, immigration enforcement continues to produce headlines across the country. Even visa overstays from Canada are landing people in ICE custody, a sign that the current administration is not picking and choosing which immigration laws to enforce.
Jaramillo-Grajales will serve his three-year sentence and then face removal to Colombia. For the unnamed American whose Social Security number was stolen, and for every lawful voter whose ballot was offset by a fraudulent one, the sentence at least closes one chapter.
But the deeper question lingers: how many more people are out there, registered and voting under identities that do not belong to them, in a system that took years to catch a single case this brazen?
A country that cannot verify who is casting its ballots cannot honestly call its elections secure. Three years in prison is a start. Accountability at every checkpoint that failed would be the finish.
