Jorge Antonio Velez-Lopez, a 69-year-old native of Colombia and former archdiocese priest, received a one-year federal prison sentence for passport fraud. Velez-Lopez, a convicted child molester, was naturalized by the court — losing his United States citizenship — and ordered removed from the U.S. to Colombia.
Velez-Lopez entered the United States more than 20 years ago as a temporary religious worker. He applied for permanent resident alien status through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in 2007 and was granted permanent residency in November 2007.
Jorge Antonio Velez-Lopez (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
As part of the process, Velez-Lopez stated under penalty of perjury that he had never knowingly committed any crime of moral turpitude.
Velez-Lopez subsequently applied to become a United States citizen in 2013 to USCIS and stated under penalty of perjury that he had never committed a crime for which he had not been arrested, that he had never given false or misleading information to any U.S. government official while applying for an immigration benefit, and that he had never lied to any U.S. government official to gain entry or admission to the U.S.
Court documents state that Velez-Lopez was interviewed by a Citizenship and Immigration Services officer in May 2013 as part of the naturalization process to become a United States citizen. He provided the same responses to the same questions while under oath and under penalty of perjury.
Velez-Lopez submitted a passport application that same year. As part of that process, he declared under penalty of perjury that he had not included any false documents supporting the application.
Velez-Lopez was arrested in 2020 by law enforcement authorities in Howard County, Maryland, and charged with five counts of third-degree sex offenses and one count of a fourth-degree sex offense. He pleaded guilty on May 14, 2021, to sexual abuse of a minor for whom he had temporary responsibility for supervising and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Velez-Lopez was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
Velez-Lopez confessed to having sexually abused the victim from June 2003 through June 2009 while serving as the child’s priest. Velez-Lopez’s admission during his criminal case led to his subsequent federal charge of passport fraud, civil denaturalization, and final removal order.
Velez-Lopez’s case was investigated by ICE as part of an ongoing national initiative designed to identify and prosecute child molesters and other egregious felons who fraudulently obtained U.S. citizenship. The operation has successfully produced criminal and civil cases against defendants convicted of murder, serial rape, child molestation, incest, sodomy, child pornography, kidnapping, sex trafficking, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, tax fraud, pill mill prescription fraud, embezzlement, aggravated identity theft, and elder abuse.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana prosecuted the case with assistance from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Immigration Litigation and ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Before his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @RandyClarkBBTX.
