Woman pleads guilty to faking Border Patrol abduction

Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, a 43-year-old South Los Angeles resident, pleaded guilty on Monday to conspiracy charges related to a staged kidnapping she orchestrated in mid-2025. The federal government announced that Calderon, a citizen of Mexico without legal status, fabricated her own disappearance to pressure Border Patrol through public outcry.

Officials from the Office of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bilal A. Essayli in the Central District of California stated that Calderon built a fraudulent narrative between June and July 2025. She repeatedly contacted people using anonymous and blocked phone numbers to claim that federal agents or their surrogates had abducted her. The attorney's office noted that these calls were intended to stir media outrage and support a planned lawsuit.

Court documents detail specific instances of the deception. On June 25, 2025, Calderon told an individual that immigration officials were taking her into custody near a fast-food restaurant and threatened to break her window. Two days later, she contacted a tenants' rights advocate, claiming authorities had taken her to San Ysidro and forced her to sign deportation papers. On that same day, she told another person she was being held in an unknown warehouse with other detainees.

The false reports led media and law enforcement to believe Calderon had been kidnapped by masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle. While Calderon remained hidden in Bakersfield, community organizers demanded her release based on these reports. On July 3, 2025, she called another contact from Tulare County, claiming the media coverage would secure her release. She then staged her release from Border Patrol and sought a witness for her case.

Calderon altered her physical appearance to suggest she had been mistreated while in custody. A co-conspirator photographed these changes to support the narrative. For two days following the staged release, she turned off her phones and ignored calls while law enforcement searched for her. The government charged her with one count of conspiracy to impede, obstruct, impair, and defeat the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations.

Calderon faces a statutory maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for February 8, 2027. The guilty plea was announced by federal officials on Monday, concluding the initial phase of the investigation into the fabricated abduction.