If you live in Cali, Colombia and need an apostilled FBI background check, the sequence is: roll your fingerprints on a U.S. FD-258 card, send the card to the FBI, then have the resulting Identity History Summary apostilled by the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. No Colombian authority and no U.S. state office can apostille that document.

That single fact — federal document, federal apostille — is where most Cali applicants go wrong. The rest of this page covers where to get printed when there is no U.S. post in the city, what the Embassy in Bogotá will and will not do for you, how translation works in Valle del Cauca, and the specific errors that send a file back across the Caribbean for a second attempt.

What do you need before you start?

Run this checklist before you book anything:

• An FD-258 fingerprint card — the U.S. federal format. A Colombian police or notaría fingerprint form is not a substitute.
• Two complete sets of prints, not one. If the first card is smudged or the ridges are flat, the second saves you a round trip.
• A blank ORI block on the card. If your provider pre-prints an originating agency identifier, it must be whited out.
• The FBI applicant information form, completed with your name exactly as it appears on your passport, your date and place of birth, and the mailing address the results should go to.
• A passport-quality identity document for the technician rolling the prints.
• A confirmed answer from the Cali office that asked for the document: do they want a sworn Spanish translation, and how recent must the FBI report be?
• A reliable international mailing address, or a service that handles the U.S. leg for you — the FBI and the Department of State both work by mail.

The FBI will not re-authenticate a summary it has already issued. If you are holding an older report, or one without the current watermark and division official signature, no amount of paperwork will get it apostilled — you must submit fresh fingerprints and obtain a new summary. Plan on that from day one rather than discovering it at the Office of Authentications.

Where are fingerprints taken in Cali?

There is no U.S. government fingerprinting facility in Cali, and no Colombian government office that produces an FBI-acceptable card as a standard public service. What Cali applicants actually do falls into three patterns:

Ink prints rolled locally

Private fingerprinting providers, some notarías, and technicians trained in dactiloscopia in the Cali metropolitan area will roll ink prints onto a card you supply. The card has to be the FD-258; download and print it at high resolution on heavy stock, or have your service provider supply genuine cards. Quality is the variable that matters. A technician who normally takes prints for Colombian purposes may not roll each finger fully from nail edge to nail edge, which is exactly what the FBI’s automated matching needs.

Travelling to Bogotá

Bogotá has commercial operators that capture prints digitally to FBI specification and print them onto FD-258 cards. For applicants in Valle del Cauca this is a one-day trip, and it is worth it if you have had a card rejected before or if your fingerprints are worn from manual work — digital capture lets the technician re-take a finger until the image is clean.

Waiting until you are in the United States

If you have U.S. travel planned, electronic capture at a U.S. location through an approved Channeler is the fastest path by a wide margin, because the prints go into the system the same day. See the full directory of FBI-approved Channelers for who is authorised to submit on your behalf, and our walkthrough of how to apostille an FBI background check processed through VetConnex if your employer or agency uses that route.

What can the nearest American post do — and what can’t it?

Cali has no U.S. consulate. The U.S. Embassy in Bogotá is the primary post, with a Consular Agency in Barranquilla. The Embassy’s published notarial service runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays by appointment only, and the post states plainly that it cannot accommodate emergency notarial appointments.

Understand what that service is. A notarial appointment gets a consular officer’s seal on a signature — an affidavit, a power of attorney, a declaration. It is not fingerprinting, and it is not an apostille. Two things the American post cannot do for you:

• It cannot apostille your FBI report. Apostilles on federal documents are issued only by the Office of Authentications in Washington, D.C.
• It cannot expedite, chase, or intervene in an FBI check. The Identity History Summary process is run by CJIS in West Virginia and has no consular channel.

Fingerprinting availability at overseas posts has been withdrawn in many countries. Do not assume Bogotá offers it; check the services page on the Embassy site or ask by email before you buy a flight from Cali.

Which apostille route applies to your document?

The word “background check” covers several different documents with completely different routes. Identify yours before you spend money.

Note the middle branch. A California Department of Justice state criminal record is a different document from an FBI check, and it is apostilled by the California Secretary of State. If a Cali office asked specifically for an FBI check, a state record will not satisfy it.

How does the process run from Cali, step by step?

1. Confirm what the Cali office wants. Ask the requesting entity — Migración Colombia, a university, an employer, a notaría handling a marriage or adoption file — whether it needs the FBI check specifically, how recent it must be, and whether the translation must be done by a translator registered in Colombia.
2. Get two clean FD-258 cards rolled. Use a provider in Cali who has done FBI cards before, or make the trip to Bogotá for digital capture printed to card. Leave the ORI block blank and print your name exactly as it appears on your passport.
3. Submit to the FBI. The card and the applicant information form go to CJIS, either directly by mail or through an approved Channeler that accepts card submissions. Use a tracked international courier, not ordinary post, and keep the tracking number.
4. Receive the authenticated summary. The FBI applies its watermark and the signature of a division official at the time it produces the results. Do not open, fold, laminate, or photocopy-and-send the sheet — the apostille attaches to the original the FBI issued.
5. Send it for apostille in Washington. The summary goes to the U.S. Department of State Office of Authentications with a completed request form and the destination country stated as Colombia. Walk-in counter service is no longer offered, so this leg is handled by mail or courier. The agency filing fee is included in our flat price.
6. Order the sworn Spanish translation last. Once the apostille is physically attached, a translator can render both the report and the apostille certificate. Doing it in the other order means paying twice.
7. Ship it back to Cali on a tracked service. Use a carrier with door-to-door delivery in Valle del Cauca and declare the contents as legal documents of no commercial value.

How long does each stage take?

Honest answer: the two U.S. agencies publish their own current turnaround, and both move. Anyone quoting you a fixed day count without checking today’s posted figure is guessing. What you can plan around is the shape of the timeline and which stages you control.

The stage that most often blows a deadline is not the FBI or the State Department — it is a rejected fingerprint card, which restarts steps two through four from zero. Archived Department of State guidance for applicants printing overseas warns that rejected fingerprints can cost anywhere from several weeks to several months. That is why two sets, rolled properly, is not optional advice.

What are the translation requirements in Valle del Cauca?

Your FBI summary and its apostille will arrive entirely in English. Colombian entities ordinarily work in Spanish, and most will want a translation — but the standard varies by who is receiving it:

• Sworn / official translation. Government bodies and notarías in Cali typically insist on a translation by an official translator rather than a bilingual friend or an agency certificate. Some will additionally want the translator’s signature authenticated.
• Translation of the apostille itself. The apostille certificate is a document in its own right. Ask whether it must be translated too — if yes, and often it is, the translation has to come after the apostille is attached.
• Where the translator sits. A translation prepared in the United States may be accepted, or the office may require a translator recognised in Colombia. This is the single question worth asking in writing, because the answer determines whether you translate before or after shipping.

Never let a translator detach, unstaple, or reprint the apostilled original. The apostille is valid only as physically issued and attached.

Which office receives the apostilled summary, and how do you get it back into Cali?

There is no single Cali office that “collects” apostilled FBI checks. The document goes to whichever entity asked for it — a residency or visa file with Migración Colombia, a university admissions or faculty-appointment office, a corporate HR department, or a notaría assembling a marriage, adoption, or guardianship file. Confirm the delivery format that office wants: physical original, original plus translation bound together, or a scanned copy filed in advance with the original presented at the counter.

For the return leg into Valle del Cauca, ship on a tracked express service with a physical street address and a mobile number for the recipient — Colombian courier delivery relies on phone contact. Declare the shipment as documents with no commercial value; legal papers of this kind are not dutiable, but an incorrectly declared shipment can sit in customs. If you are outside Colombia when the document is finished, have it delivered to someone in Cali with authority to receive it, rather than to a poste restante arrangement.

Colombia joined the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention years ago, which is exactly why this works: under the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention, a U.S. apostille is the final step and no Colombian consular legalization follows it. Colombia has itself reported to the HCCH that foreign authorities sometimes demand extra consular certification of an apostille — a reminder that over-legalization requests are a known problem in both directions and are usually mistaken.

Common reasons an apostille request is rejected

1. Illegible or partial fingerprints. The most frequent failure. Flat ridges, over-inked fingers, or prints that do not roll to the nail edges get bounced by automated review.
2. A foreign fingerprint form instead of the FD-258. Prints taken on a Colombian document will not be accepted. The card format is not negotiable.
3. The ORI block filled in. It must be blank on a personal-review submission; white it out if your provider pre-printed it.
4. Asking the FBI to re-authenticate an old summary. Explicitly refused. Re-run the check.
5. Sending the summary to a state Secretary of State. California’s office, or any other state’s, will return a federal document unapostilled. Federal goes to Washington.
6. Wrong payment instrument to the FBI. If you file directly, use the payment method the FBI specifies — personal checks are not accepted. When we handle the file, this is covered by our flat price.
7. Name mismatch. The name on the fingerprint card, the applicant form, and your passport must match, including both surnames if your Colombian documents carry them.
8. A summary that is too old by the time it reaches Cali. Receiving offices commonly want a report issued within the last few months. Time the fingerprinting to your submission deadline, not to your convenience.
9. Translation done before the apostille. The translator cannot cover a certificate that does not exist yet, and the office may reject a partial translation.
10. Damage to the issued document. Stapling, hole-punching, laminating, or separating pages of the FBI summary can invalidate it for authentication.

What is specific to Cali rather than anywhere else in Colombia?

Three things. First, the absence of a U.S. post in the city means every consular-adjacent errand becomes a Bogotá trip, so it is worth consolidating: get prints, notarials, and any visa appointment into one journey. Second, fingerprinting expertise in Cali is thinner than in Bogotá, so vet whoever rolls your card and ask directly whether they have produced FD-258 cards accepted by the FBI before. Third, Valle del Cauca receiving offices vary in how strictly they apply translation and recency rules, so a written answer from the counter you will actually submit to is worth more than any general guidance, including ours.

Which other cities do we handle FBI fingerprinting and apostilles for?

The same federal pathway applies wherever you live, and we run it regularly for applicants abroad. If your situation shifts, these walkthroughs cover the local detail: FBI fingerprinting in Madrid, FBI fingerprinting in Barcelona, and FBI fingerprinting in Alicante for Spain’s sworn-translation regime, and the FBI background check apostille for Costa Rica for another Latin American Hague member with its own quirks.

What should you do next?

Do one thing today: email or call the office in Cali that asked for the document and get two answers in writing — how recent the FBI report must be, and whether the Spanish translation must come from a translator registered in Colombia. Those two answers set your fingerprinting date and decide whether the translation happens in the United States or after the document lands in Valle del Cauca.

Then get your prints rolled — two sets, FD-258, ORI blank — and start an order with us for the U.S. leg. We receive the card or the issued summary, file with the FBI and the Department of State, and courier the apostilled original back to your address in Cali. Our price is $120 per apostille, all-inclusive: no separate government-fee surcharge and no per-page add-ons. Requirements differ between receiving entities, and the office that receives your document has the final say on what it will accept, which is why that first phone call matters more than anything else on this page.