An illegal immigrant has pleaded guilty to faking an ICE kidnapping last year, admitting that she told people she was grabbed by masked men and then disappeared for days before staging her own “release” — all to try to taint the immigration agency at the height of the Los Angeles enforcement surge.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon’s fabricated tale of woe became a rallying point for immigration rights activists, who demanded her release and suggested she had been disappeared because she could not be found in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s public detainee locator tool.
In fact, she admitted in court that she was hiding out in Bakersfield — spending time holed up in a shopping plaza parking lot as well as staying at an associate’s home — while making calls to others to report on her manufactured ordeal as she ginned up anti-ICE sentiment.
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When she finally reemerged, she had altered her appearance to make it seem as if she had been roughed up by federal agents.
Calderon, 43, had kept her phone turned off even as ICE was trying to track her down — evidence that federal prosecutors later used to dismantle her claim, culminating in her guilty plea Monday to a charge of conspiracy to impede Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s detective branch.
“As a result of Calderon’s intentional lies, false information was reported to the media and law enforcement that Calderon had been ’kidnapped’ by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle, who were acting as federal agents or as surrogates of federal agents,” the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said in announcing the guilty plea.
SEE ALSO: Man claimed ICE abducted his wife; now he’s charged with her murder
Calderon took action at a tense time in Los Angeles.
Riots in the city turned violent in early June as protesters complained of ICE’s surge into the city — the first in a string of high-profile sweeps through major American metropolises.
President Trump federalized and deployed National Guard troops and even active-duty Marines to protect federal buildings and police hot spots, and the troops were still in place in late June, when Calderon faked her abduction.
Advocates ate up the story, staging a press conference demanding her freedom.
With television cameras rolling, demonstrators waved signs reading “Stop the abduction,” and chanted “Free Juli now!”
Scott Mechkowski, a former deputy field office director for ICE in New York, said Calderon’s case became the blueprint for other fake tales of ICE mistreatment.
That includes a recent case in New Jersey, where a woman claimed her husband was “kidnapped” by ICE while buying diapers for his son, and held in detention for months. In fact, county records show he was arrested by local police officers for domestic violence.
It also includes a California man who accused ICE of taking his wife when she went to get the mail on Sept. 30. His story unraveled, and he now stands accused of murdering her amid a divorce and custody battle.
“When politicians keep calling ICE kidnappers, ’ICE took them’ becomes the cover story,” said Mr. Mechkowski, now a visiting fellow at the Oversight Project and the Mass Deportation Coalition.
He said Calderon should face the maximum prison time possible for the crime to which she has pleaded guilty.
“ICE officers are being doxxed and shot at, and lies like this make it worse,” he said. “She should get every day of the five years, and ICE should be waiting at the door when she walks out. Every activist and reporter who ran with her story owes those officers an apology.”
Calderon had been living in the U.S. under federal law enforcement parole that expired in 2023, leaving her without legal status. She could face deportation after her criminal case is concluded.
Calderon, in an initial call to an associate on June 25, 2025, had alleged that immigration officials were threatening to break in her window. She then went silent.
Two days later, she called a community activist and, while blocking her phone number to conceal her caller identification, claimed she had been taken by “masked” agents to a location where she was being pressured to sign self-deportation documents. She told another activist that same day that she had been taken to a warehouse and was being held with other immigration detainees.
On June 30, the groups held their press conference.
On July 3, Calderon called back one of the activists to say she would be released because of the media attention.
She staged her release by approaching a person and saying she had just been dropped off by Border Patrol agents. She asked the person to serve as a witness and vowed to sue the agency.
An accomplice, Yvette Estrada, who hosted Calderon while she was supposedly in ICE custody, agreed to plead guilty in August to lying to investigators about her role.
In her plea agreement, Calderon conceded that she had intended for activists to rally around her case and protest ICE.
Also this week, federal prosecutors in Utah announced the sentencing of a couple who helped an illegal immigrant suspect escape ICE custody.
Kelzie Ryann Luna and George Sanchez-Juarez pleaded guilty and received four days in jail each.
ICE officers were at a Home Depot in Salt Lake City on Oct. 8, 2025, attempting to arrest four people they believed to have been previously deported.
One of the targets fled and encountered Luna and Sanchez-Juarez, who concealed him in their white Volkswagen Golf, then used bolt cutters to release him from handcuffs. They then took to social media to hail their own “heroism.”
Prosecutors sharply criticized Luna and Sanchez-Juarez for intervening in the operation.
The two were identified by security camera footage that captured the Golf and by Luna’s social media posts, in which she was wearing a business name tag. They then tracked down the vehicle at one of the businesses’ locations.
In addition to the jail time, they each had to pay a $600 fine and jointly pay $28 in restitution for the ruined handcuffs.
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