A South Los Angeles woman who staged a hoax kidnapping by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in order to gain public sympathy and solicit donations pleaded guilty Monday, Oct. 26 to a federal charge.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, 43, entered a plea in Los Angeles federal court to a single count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair, and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations within federal jurisdiction.
Sentencing was set for Feb. 8, when Calderon could face up to five years in federal prison, prosecutors said.
In June 2025, an attorney told assembled media that Calderon had been kidnapped days earlier at a Jack in the Box restaurant parking lot in downtown Los Angeles and taken to San Ysidro, where she was presented to an ICE staffer and handed voluntary self-deportation paperwork.
The attorney said Calderon refused to sign the paperwork and demanded to speak to a judge and a lawyer. In response, the lawyer said, “she was punished” by federal agents and sent to a warehouse in an undisclosed location where she was abused.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the news conference garnered media attention and stoked fear in the community. Meanwhile, Calderon’s daughter set up a GoFundMe page, requesting $4,500 and stating that Calderon “was taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle … when she was on her way to work.”
The Department of Homeland Security in a statement said the hoax was created to malign the administration’s immigration-enforcement efforts. DHS described Calderon as a Mexican national living in the U.S. illegally.
On July 3, 2025, when Calderon was still purportedly missing, federal agents “grew concerned” after confirming that Calderon was not in immigration custody, prosecutors said, and DHS personnel began searching for the woman.
Two days later, agents tracked Calderon down in a shopping plaza parking lot in Bakersfield. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Mexican national and self-described activist continued to falsely claim she was taken by masked men and held in custody with others.
Prosecutors said video surveillance — including images of Calderon leaving the Jack in the Box parking lot and getting into a nearby sedan — as well as telephone records, bolstered suspicions that Calderon fabricated the entire story.
Calderon with another person created what law enforcement described as fabricated photos made to look as if she was abused while in federal immigration custody.