EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — An American man who lives in Ciudad Juarez has been sentenced to a little over a year in prison after he sold his birth certificate to a Mexican man so he could cross into the U.S.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office in the District of New Mexico, 31-year-old David Ramirez was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison after a Mexican man was caught at the Alamogordo Border Patrol checkpoint using Ramirez’s birth certificate to claim that he was an American citizen.
Court documents show this happened on Dec. 1, 2025.
The court documents also detail that the Mexican man told authorities that he had obtained the birth certificate through an “intermediary.”
Ramirez was caught on Feb. 14, 2026, when he crossed into El Paso from Juarez through the Bridge of the Americas.
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According to the documents, Ramirez admitted what had happened and then pleaded guilty to “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
In the release announcing the sentencing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of New Mexico highlighted that Ramirez won’t be eligible for parole, as there is no parole in the federal system, and added that after he finishes his sentence, he will have to serve three years of “supervised release.”
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