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, February 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 on 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 on November 6, 2007.
Velez applied for naturalization on 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 on 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 naturalised as a U.S. citizen on May 29, 2013.
Velez submitted a passport application on September 27, 2013, and declared under penalty of perjury that he had not included any false documents in support of the application.
Velez was arrested on February 19, 2020, by local authorities in Howard County, Maryland, and charged with five counts of a third-degree sex offence and one count of a fourth-degree sex offence.
He pled guilty on May 14, 2021, to sexual abuse of a minor for whom he had temporary responsibility for supervising, in violation of the 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.
