Former priest and convicted child molester sentenced for passport fraud, stripped of citizenship, and ordered deported

ALEXANDRIA, La. – An investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resulted in a one-year sentence for passport fraud for Jorge Antonio Velez-Lopez, a 69-year-old Columbian national, former archdiocese priest and convicted child molester, Feb. 28. Velez was also civilly denaturalized as a U.S. citizen and ordered removed from the United States.

Velez entered the U.S. in 2003 as a temporary religious worker. Velez applied for permanent residency May 15, 2007, to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and stated under penalty of perjury that he had never knowingly committed any crime of moral turpitude. He was granted permanent residency Nov. 6, 2007.

Velez applied for naturalization March 11, 2013, to Citizenship and Immigration Services 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.

Velez was interviewed May 23, 2013, by a Citizenship and Immigration Services officer and provided the same responses to the same questions while under oath and penalty of perjury. He was naturalized as a U.S. citizen on May 29, 2013.

Velez submitted a passport application Sept. 27, 2013, and declared under penalty of perjury that he had not included any false documents in support of the application.

Velez was arrested Feb. 19, 2020, by local authorities in Howard County, Maryland, and charged with five counts of third-degree sex offense and one count of fourth-degree sex offense. He pled guilty May 14, 2021, to sexual abuse of a minor for whom he had temporary responsibility for supervising, in violation of Maryland Criminal Code, and was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of nine years and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

Velez confessed to having sexually abused the victim from June 2003 through June 2009 while serving as the child’s priest.

“Child molesters like Velez who lied about their crimes to become citizens thought they could hide behind those who earned what they stole,” said ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations New Orleans acting Field Office Director Scott Ladwig. “They thought ICE would have to search through thousands of records to find them. They were right. That's exactly what we did. ICE and our partners will relentlessly defend the integrity of our nation's naturalization process.”

The 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.

For more news and information on how ERO New Orleans carries out its immigration enforcement mission in Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, follow us on X at @ERONewOrleans.

Source: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE.gov)