Los Angeles Woman Admits Faking Her Own ‘Kidnapping’ by Immigration Agents in 2025
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón claimed agents snatched her near a Jack in the Box. She was hiding in Bakersfield while organizers demanded her release.
A South Los Angeles woman whose disappearance in June 2025 was publicized as a kidnapping by federal agents has pleaded guilty to staging the whole thing.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderón, 43, a Mexican citizen who prosecutors say has been in the U.S. illegally since overstaying in 2023, pleaded guilty on Oct. 26, 2026, to conspiracy to impede and obstruct the lawful functions of Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said. U.S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson set sentencing for Feb. 8, 2027. She faces up to five years in federal prison.
Phone calls with caller ID blocked
On June 25, 2025, she told someone that “immigration” was taking her while she was in or near a fast-food restaurant, and that officials had “turned the lights on” and “threatened to break her window,” according to her plea agreement. A superseding indictment filed in January 2026 identifies the restaurant as a Jack in the Box on Alameda Street in Los Angeles. It says she told the person to “wait an hour” before reporting it, then walked away and voluntarily got into a gray sedan that drove her to Bakersfield.
Over the next days, with her caller ID blocked, she called a member of a tenants’ rights group and claimed she had been taken to San Ysidro and pressured to sign voluntary removal papers. She called another person and said she was in a warehouse with other detainees, and later said she was being held with someone from “B-18,” an immigration facility in Los Angeles, prosecutors said.
False reports spread to the media and police that masked men in plain clothes in an unmarked vehicle had kidnapped her. On June 30, 2025, community organizers held a news conference in Los Angeles demanding her release. All the while, she knew about the coverage and stayed hidden in Bakersfield, according to the office.
A staged release
On July 3, 2025, she traveled to Tulare County to stage her release. She told a stranger she had just been dropped off by “Border Patrol” and asked the person to be a witness in a lawsuit she planned to file against the agency, prosecutors said. She altered her appearance to look mistreated, and a co-conspirator photographed her. For three days she turned off her phones and ignored calls from law enforcement.
The indictment alleged the plan was meant to get federal agencies to investigate and then compensate her for supposed civil rights violations. HSI agents interviewed her in Bakersfield on July 5, 2025, according to the indictment. Court minutes from October 2025 show she was brought to court in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
