Illegal Alien Admits She Faked Her Kidnapping by Immigration Agents and Hid While Activists Demanded Her Release

An illegal alien from Mexico admitted Monday that she invented her own kidnapping by immigration agents last summer, then hid out in Bakersfield while activists in Los Angeles held a press conference demanding the government "release" her.

Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, of South Los Angeles, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to "impede, obstruct, impair, and defeat the lawful function" of Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles announced. Judge Stephen V. Wilson set sentencing for Feb. 8, 2027. She faces up to five years in federal prison.

Remember the summer of 2025, when politicians and activists across Los Angeles were calling federal immigration arrests "kidnappings" and warning about masked "bounty hunters"? This was one of the stories that fueled it. Every word was fake, and she now admits it.

The story she sold

According to her plea agreement, as laid out by prosecutors, it started on June 25, 2025. Calderón told someone that "immigration" was taking her at a fast-food restaurant, that officers had "turned the lights on" and "threatened to break her window."

Over the next three days she made a string of calls with her caller ID blocked. She told a member of a tenants' rights group she had been hauled to San Ysidro on the Mexican border and pressured to sign voluntary removal papers. She told someone else she had been moved to a warehouse with other detainees. In another call she said she was being held with someone from B-18, an immigration facility in Los Angeles, and a person "picked up at a gas station in Bakersfield."

Bakersfield was where she actually was.

On June 30, activists and lawyers went in front of cameras. A lawyer for her family said she had been taken by masked men at a Jack in the Box in downtown Los Angeles and "presented with voluntary self-deportation paperwork," and that when she refused, "she was punished" and sent to a warehouse, according to the July 2025 federal complaint. Her daughter launched a GoFundMe asking for $4,500, writing that her mother "was taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle."

Her plea agreement says Calderón knew about the coverage the whole time "and chose to stay hidden in Bakersfield."

Then she staged the ending

On July 3, she called someone to say she would be freed soon "because of all the media coverage." That same day she traveled to Tulare County, approached someone and claimed "Border Patrol" had just dropped her off. She asked that person to be a witness in her "case" against Border Patrol, because she planned to sue the agency.

She also changed her appearance to look like she had been mistreated in custody, and a co-conspirator photographed her. Prosecutors said in 2025 that she planned a July 6 press conference with those photos to drive up donations.

Think of it as pulling a fire alarm, then hiding across the street to watch the trucks roll, and finally planning to sue the fire department.

The real cost: agents pulled off real cases

Federal agents didn't treat the claim as a joke. On July 3, after confirming she was not in immigration custody, Homeland Security Investigations began hunting for her over the Fourth of July weekend. From July 3 to July 5, Calderón switched off her phones and ignored calls from law enforcement, and got others to do the same, her plea agreement says. HSI agents found her July 5 in a Bakersfield shopping plaza parking lot. Even then, prosecutors said, she kept insisting masked men had taken her.

Surveillance video showed her leaving the Jack in the Box lot and getting into a nearby sedan, and telephone records showed she made up the entire story, according to the complaint.

"The real cost of a fraud like this is the amount of fentanyl not seized, child predators not removed from the communities, and human trafficking victims not rescued because law enforcement re-directed resources to recover the defendant," HSI Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang said when she was charged.

Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, put it bluntly at the time: "Dangerous rhetoric that ICE agents are 'kidnapping' illegal immigrants is being recklessly peddled by politicians and echoed in the media to inflame the public and discredit our courageous federal agents." He added that "this hoax 'kidnapping' was a well-orchestrated conspiracy."

The Department of Homeland Security was sharper: "Politicians and activist media peddled these smears that were designed to demonize law enforcement and evade accountability."

What's next

The original 2025 complaint charged her with conspiracy and with making false statements to federal officers. Monday's plea covers one conspiracy count. Judge Wilson will sentence her on Feb. 8. The GoFundMe raised only $80 before the company pulled it and refunded every dollar, a GoFundMe spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times in 2025. Prosecutors were already saying then that "all those involved" would face consequences. Monday's release mentions a co-conspirator who took the fake photos but does not say whether anyone else will be charged.

Prosecutors' release also doesn't say what happens next on her immigration case. She was in immigration custody when she was charged in 2025.

The larger lesson is about the people who ran with it. A woman nobody could find in any detention database was declared "abducted" on camera, with no proof, because the story fit the narrative. It took federal agents a holiday weekend to find her. It took more than a year for her to admit what the evidence showed from the start.