Mexican Woman in the U.S. Illegally Pleads Guilty to Staging Her Own 'Kidnapping' by Federal Agents to Build a Case Against Border Patrol

A woman who prosecutors say faked her own abduction by immigration agents in 2025 has pleaded guilty, Fox News reports.

The case. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California says Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, 43, of South Los Angeles, a Mexican national in the country illegally, falsely claimed that federal agents or people acting for them had kidnapped her. The office says she wanted to stir media outrage and build a lawsuit against Border Patrol, then went into hiding.

What prosecutors say she did. In June and July 2025 she used blocked and anonymous calls to tell people she had been seized near a fast-food restaurant, taken to San Ysidro and made to sign deportation papers, and then moved to a warehouse with other detainees. Prosecutors say that false information reached the media and police as a report of "masked men in plain clothes driving an unmarked vehicle." Community organizers demanded her release while she stayed in Bakersfield.

The staged release. On July 3, 2025, she is said to have traveled to Tulare County to stage her release from "Border Patrol," approached someone about serving as a witness, and altered her appearance to look mistreated. A co-conspirator photographed her. She then turned off her phones while law enforcement was looking for her.

The plea. She pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to impede and obstruct the lawful function of Homeland Security Investigations. The statutory maximum is five years in federal prison. Her hearing is set for Feb. 8, 2027.

Note for readers: the account comes from the prosecutors' announcement as relayed by Fox. The co-conspirator who took the photographs is not named.