Illegal Alien Used One Government Document to Disappear Into the Voter Rolls for Decades

The Justice Department is threatening to prosecute election officials over noncitizens on the voter rolls.

A newly closed case out of Florida just showed why that threat is not empty.

One government document let an illegal alien vanish into that very system for years.

A Fake Name Survived Four Presidential Elections

Carlos Felipe Jaramillo Grajales walked into a Florida DMV in March 2003 with a dead simple plan.

He used a real American's name, date of birth, and Social Security number to get a Florida driver's license that same month.

He renewed that license again and again for the next twenty-one years, right up through February 2024.

He used the same stolen identity to get a U.S. passport in 2003, then renewed it in 2013 and again in 2023.

By December 2010 he was a registered voter in Duval County, and he cast a ballot in the November 2020 election under a name that was never his.

Nobody in Tallahassee or Washington caught it until federal investigators finally connected the paperwork trail this year.

U.S. District Judge Harvey Schlesinger sentenced Jaramillo Grajales to three years in federal prison.

He is now facing judicial removal back to Colombia the moment his sentence ends.

HSI Jacksonville Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tim Hemker did not soften the message when the sentence was announced.

"This conviction demonstrates that identity theft, immigration fraud, and fraud against the integrity of United States government systems will be investigated thoroughly and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Hemker said.

The Massachusetts Case That Shows This Was Never a One Time Fluke

That same year, federal prosecutors in Boston closed out an almost identical case.

Lina Maria Orovio-Hernandez, a 60-year-old Colombian national, had lived under a stolen American identity since 2004.

She stole the identity of a U.S. citizen born in Puerto Rico and rode it for more than twenty years.

She voted in the November 2024 presidential election in Boston and posed for a photo with an "I Voted" sticker at an ATM the same day.

While she was voting under a false name, she also collected $259,589 in Section 8 housing assistance, $101,257 in disability payments, and $43,348 in food stamps.

A jury convicted her in February 2026, and a judge handed her 33 months in prison plus $404,194 in restitution.

U.S. Attorney Leah Foley called it exactly what it was.

"This was a deliberate, calculated fraud scheme carried out with blatant disregard for American taxpayers and our elections," Foley said.

HUD Office of Inspector General Special Agent Shawn Rice put it even more bluntly.

"Her actions were not a one-time mistake but a calculated and sustained effort to defraud the United States Government," Rice said.

Two Colombian nationals, two stolen identities, two decades each, both ending in federal prison in the same month – that is not a coincidence, that is a pattern.

Why the Government Keeps Finding These Cases Only After the Damage Is Done

Voter rolls in most states check whether a Social Security number exists, not whether it belongs to the person using it.

That gap is exactly how a stolen identity survives a DMV renewal, a passport renewal, and a voter registration all without triggering a single flag.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon put a number on the problem this summer that should end any talk of these two cases being isolated.

"We're finding tens of thousands of noncitizens on the voter rolls, hundreds of thousands of dead people on the voter rolls, and duplicate registrations between states," Dhillon said.

Her office has already indicted one noncitizen for illegally voting in seven separate federal elections in Pennsylvania, with dozens more cases moving through the pipeline.

Every fake registration that slips through cancels out a real citizen's vote, and it still takes federal agents years to unwind.

Twenty-one years is not a loophole, it is a system that was never built to catch the fraud in the first place.

Sources:

• U.S. Department of Homeland Security, "ICE Investigation Leads to Sentencing of Illegal Alien Who Committed Identity Theft to Illegally Vote in Elections for More Than 20 Years," DHS.gov, August 14, 2026.
• Scott McClallen, "Illegal Alien Sentenced to Three Years for Stealing U.S. Citizen's Identity, Voting Illegally," Townhall, August 14, 2026.
• U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts, "Illegal Alien Who Lived in U.S. Under Stolen Identity for More Than Two Decades Sentenced to Prison for Voter Fraud, Identity Theft and Stealing Over $400,000 in Federal Benefits," Justice.gov, August 2026.
• "Top DOJ Prosecutor Says Tens of Thousands of Noncitizens on Voter Rolls, Dozens Illegally Voted," Just the News, 2026.
• Ben Smith, "Illegal Alien Voted Under Stolen Identity. The Government Missed It for 20 Years.," RedState, August 16, 2026.