Kidnapping Hoax Lands Illegal Alien In Even Deeper Trouble

Everyone wants to be the main character, and an illegal alien living in Los Angeles is now under arrest for claiming she was kidnapped by ICE, while her family fundraised off that alleged kidnapping.

The story begins with the daughter of Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon filing a police report with the LAPD, saying that her mother had been swept up by ICE, or possible bounty hunters for ICE, at a local Jack in the Box. The lawyer working with the family accused ICE of kidnapping, and then set up a GoFundMe in order to raise money for Calderon’s supposed defense. The lawyer and the Calderon family held a press conference on June 30th.

Loved ones and attorneys held a press conference on Monday to speak out about a South Los Angeles mother and community leader who they say was taken last week by possible federal agents, brought down to the U.S. border at San Ysidro and is now being held in a warehouse until she agrees to self-deport.

Attorney Stephano Medina detailed what he described as a kidnapping of community leader Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, who goes by the name Juli, on Wednesday, June 25.

“In this very parking lot a week ago, uniformed men in unmarked cars kidnapped Juli, and with her courage and her strength — even though we don’t know where Juli is and we don’t know when we will find her — Juli has managed to make two phone calls to the family since she’s been kidnapped,” said Medina. “And so I want to share with you some of the details that Juli has shared with us.”

Medina then explained that, through Juli’s two calls, she described how she was driving down Alameda Street on her way to her janitorial job on Wednesday night when she noticed two trucks following her. At one point, one of the trucks got in front of her, so Juli decided to pull into a parking lot located by a Jack in the Box on 1415 S Alameda St., hoping that the trucks would pass her by.

“Juli told us that when she was picked up in this parking lot, she wasn’t taken to any Detention Center. She wasn’t taken to be processed,” said Medina. “Instead, Juli was taken directly from this parking lot to the border at San Ysidro, and there she was presented to an ICE staffer. There, Juli was presented with voluntary self deportation paperwork. She was taken straight from here to the border and pressured to sign self deportation paperwork.”

When Juli refused to sign the paperwork and demanded to see a judge and have legal representation, Medina said she, along with fellow travelers who were also insisting on their rights, was then taken to an unmarked warehouse located somewhere away from the border. There, she was allegedly only given water, no food, in a warehouse that was holding men and women together, without a law enforcement employee or official present.

“She told us that some people had been in that warehouse for months,” continued Medina. “She said, ‘They are keeping us here until we agree to sign voluntary self deportation paperwork.’ So Juli, an immigrant to this country who’s lived here for over 20 years, when she demanded to see a judge, when she demanded her right to speak to an attorney, she was taken to a warehouse where she wasn’t given any food, and she was being told that she was going to be kept there until she signed this voluntary self deportation paperwork.”

Loved ones say Juli has proven herself to be a strong community leader and mother, raising three children — two of whom have learning differences — while also volunteering to fight for immigrant rights.

Well, there was one big problem. The Department of Homeland Security had no record of Calderon being in custody. And when the daughter filed the missing person report, that allowed them to investigate what actually happen during this alleged “kidnapping.” Prepare your shocked faces, everyone.

The daughter filed a missing person report with the Los Angeles Police Department, which notified Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) of Calderon’s supposed kidnapping.

HSI determined Calderon was not in DHS custody and, out of concern for her safety, the agency launched its own investigation to find her. During the investigation, HSI noticed several irregularities, including that the phone calls to loved ones that Calderon had supposedly made via borrowed phones were made from her cell phone, intentionally masked to appear as an unknown number.

According to the affidavit, video surveillance of Calderon’s alleged forced abduction further showed her calmly leaving the Jack in the Box parking lot and getting into a nearby sedan. Despite the video showing a marked LAPD car in the vicinity, Calderon did not make any attempts to alert officers that she was in danger.

The affidavit states that “when confronted with true information that contradicted their kidnapping story,” Calderon and others lied to federal agents and “attempted to thwart law enforcement efforts” by keeping her whereabouts from law enforcement.

According to a DOJ statement, HSI agents tracked Calderon down July 5 in a shopping plaza parking lot in Bakersfield, California. The statement said Calderon continued to claim she was taken by masked men and held in custody with others.

She is in U.S. immigration custody and is facing a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison for conspiracy and up to five years for false statements if convicted of the charges.

It should be noted that Calderon is NOT in custody for being in the country illegally – though according to the reports, her parole expired in 2023, and she has apparently lived in the United States illegally for “over 20 years,” per the lawyer that was representing the family. She is under arrest and being charged with lying to authorities, repeatedly insisting that she was the victim of a kidnapping. And we can’t forget the GoFundMe money that the family was trying to raise – though no one is being charged for that, and GoFundMe removed the fundraiser and says the family never got any money. Hilariously, GoFundMe says the family raised a total of $80.

While Calderon is obviously rightfully being charged with lying to the authorities, the conspiracy charge needs to stick to more people than just her. The daughter filed the missing persons report, and Stephano Medina, the lawyer representing the family, was pushing the entire kidnapping story wholesale to the media. And even though the GoFundMe ended up being a joke, the family had every reason to believe they could, at minimum, raise their targeted goal of $4,500 and maybe even more. Why? Because Karen Bass, the incompetent and gullible fool who is mayor of Los Angeles, posted on X about Calderon’s arrest before the hoax came to light. It had all the hallmarks of Bass’s favorite subject right now – a kidnapping by ICE, a mother being held in federal custody, a family trying to get her released! It was Karen Bass bait, and she swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker.

On July 1, Bass touted the claims of Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, a 41-year-old Mexican national whose family said she was abducted in a Jack in the Box parking lot on her way to work days earlier. At a press conference on June 30, Calderon’s family said “she was taken … to the border and pressured to sign self deportation paperwork.”

“She’s a mother from L.A.—taken out of her car on her way to work, and then held in a warehouse as officers hoped she would ‘self-deport,’” wrote Bass, citing a local news report about Calderon. “No hearing. Just fear,” Bass added. “This doesn’t make anyone safer.”

Of course, she posted it from her official mayor’s account. (If she deletes it, there are screenshots.)

She’s a mother from L.A. — taken out of her car on her way to work, and then held in a warehouse as officers hoped she would “self-deport.”

No hearing. Just fear.

This doesn’t make anyone safer. https://t.co/gwkq017y4l

— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 1, 2025

And it seems obvious that this story was top of mind for Bass when she made these statements the same day, which were also tweeted out from her official account.

Those being snatched off city streets, chased through parking lots, and grabbed out of their cars are our neighbors, our coworkers, and our family members.

We will stand strong for every Angeleno. pic.twitter.com/GeZyJj5rd0

— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) July 1, 2025

With Mayor Karen Bass highlighting their kidnapping tale, the family and the lawyer had every reason to expect that they would get enough sympathy to raise their GoFundMe’s profile. Too bad for them, the story fell apart just mere days later when Calderon was discovered in Bakersfield on July 5th, and then she cooked her own goose by sticking to the kidnapping story.

The DOJ should throw the book at the family and the lawyer. They’ve already opened the door to that with the conspiracy charge against Calderon. The lawyer, Medina, spun a fantastical tale of kidnapping and bounty hunters and ICE custody – and he never took the time to verify any of the details? He’s either idiotically stupid and too dumb to be an attorney, or he was in on the conspiracy. As for the family? They had to have known, but again, they screwed up by filing the missing person report. I’m sure they were trying to sell the hoax by doing that, with no realization that it would allow for an actual investigation. Someone in that family is going to sing like a nightingale to avoid jail time, and the U.S. District Attorney should just charge them all and see who sings first.

ICE has enough problems with being targeted right now by activists and protesters and mayors like Karen Bass. Making false accusations like this is dangerous. The U.S. District Attorney should make an example out of Calderon’s case, not just by charging her, but by charging the whole family and the lawyer with conspiracy to commit fraud, with the GoFundMe as the evidence. Immediate and dramatic consequences are the only way this kind of hoaxing gets nipped in the bud. Unfortunately, there’s probably nothing that can be done with Karen Bass. There are no laws against being an incompetent mayor and a gullible idiot.

Featured image: handcuffs criminal via iStock, cropped and modified

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