A Mexican citizen living in Texas was sentenced to eight years in prison last week and fined $5,000 for illegally voting in multiple elections.
Rosa Maria Ortega, 37, from Grand Prairie, Texas was found guilty last Wednesday on two counts of illegal voting and was sentenced the following day, the Dallas Morning News reported.
She voted in the November 2012 general election and then in the May 2014 Republican primary runoff in Dallas County "when she knew she was not a United States citizen," according to a Tarrant County jury indictment. She was arrested in 2015.
Ortega had voted in five different elections in Dallas since 2012 and tried to register to vote twice in Tarrant County. Her application was denied each time, bringing her identity into question.
Ortega was born in Monterrey, Mexico and is a legal resident of the country. Her mother illegally brought her to the United States when she was just an infant. More than a decade later, Rosa's mother was deported from the U.S. while she decided to stay and became a legal resident.
During an interview with Fox News, Ortega claimed she was being made an example of and was unaware she was unable to vote.
"They could have done this to someone else, that really did something wrong, that really did a crime," Ortega said, "Just to be an example. It's just not fair."
Ortega had testified in 2015 that she did not understand the difference between legal residency and citizenship.
"If I knew, everything would have been done the correct way," Ortega said. "All my life I was taught I was a U.S. citizen."
According to the Dallas News, "Attorneys for the state showed the jury that she checked a box on her driver's license form indicating she was not a citizen."
Ortega told investigators that she did try to become a citizen, but assistant attorney general said she never pursued the citizenship process.
Tarrant County Assistant District Attorney Harry White, who prosecuted the case, called Ortega's actions a "big deal."
"This is a big deal," he said in a statement. "People insist this kind of thing doesn't happen, but it's happening right here at home. The principle of one citizen, one vote is one of our most fundamental rights as U.S. citizens, and must be protected."
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton–for whom Ortega voted in 2014–helped in the prosecution," according to Fox News.
Illegally voting is considered a second-degree felony and punishable by up to twenty years in prison.
Voter fraud has been in the headlines since President Trump made it an issue after his election victory. Trump has made unsubstantiated claims that he lost the popular vote in part because millions of people voted illegally.
Ortega's lawyer, Clark Birdsall, told the New York Times that Ortega will likely be deported after serving her prison sentence.
"She'll do eight years in a Texas prison," he said. "And then she'll be deported, and wake up blinking and scratching in a country she doesn't know."