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Mexican woman in US illegally charged with faking her own ICE ‘kidnapping’
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A Mexican illegal alien living in Los Angeles was charged with orchestrating her own fake ICE “kidnapping” to generate sympathy and solicit donations, the Justice Department announced Thursday.
Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, 41, a resident of South Los Angeles, was charged with conspiracy and making false statements to federal officers, the DOJ said.
Calderon had been living in the U.S. based on a federal law enforcement parole that expired in 2023. She is in federal custody after she allegedly faked her kidnapping.
This comes after local outlet KTLA reported on a news conference held by Calderon’s “loved ones and attorneys,” who claimed she had been “kidnapped” by uniformed men in unmarked cars June 25.
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According to an affidavit filed in a criminal complaint against Mexican illegal Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, an HSI investigator determined these photos provided to investigators were likely “created to make it appear as if Calderon was in custody and that she had been mistreated while there.” (US Department of Justice)
The outlet reported that a man identified as an attorney named Stephano Medina claimed Calderon was cornered in a Jack in the Box parking lot in Los Angeles by men who did not identify themselves but were possibly bounty hunters. Medina claimed Calderon was taken to the border and presented to an “ICE staffer,” who demanded she sign self-deportation paperwork.
Medina said that when Calderon refused to sign the paperwork, she was taken to a warehouse until she agreed to sign the document.
Fox News Digital obtained a copy of the criminal complaint against Calderon, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. An affidavit filed with the complaint alleges that Calderon and others “planned a hoax kidnapping” for their benefit, “including their own pecuniary gain.”
The affidavit said that Calderon’s daughter set up a GoFundMe page to raise $4,500 after her mother was “taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle.”
A GoFundMe spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the page was removed and that the family did not access any of the funds raised.
“GoFundMe has zero tolerance for the misuse of our platform, or any attempt to exploit the generosity of others, and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing,” the spokesperson said, adding, “This fundraiser was removed from the platform and the $80 raised was refunded; at no point did the organizer have access to any of the funds. The GoFundMe Giving Guarantee guarantees donors a full refund in the rare case something isn’t right.”
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According to an affidavit included in a criminal complaint against Calderon, an HSI investigator reviewed surveillance footage that showed her “walking towards a parked silver Nissan sedan. Calderon placed the bag she was carrying in the back seat of the Nissan, then opened the passenger car door and got into the car. I have watched this video, and Calderon is again walking at a normal pace, and does not appear to be in any distress.” (US Department of Justice)
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.
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According to an affidavit included in the criminal complaint against Calderon, this photo, which the affidavit says appears to show Calderon on the left, was taken at approximately 4:40 p.m. at the Bakersfield, California, shopping mall while she was supposedly missing, leading investigators to suspect the kidnapping was a hoax. (Justice Department)
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.
Commenting on the charges, U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California Bill Essayli thanked HSI and “all federal agents facing unprecedented levels of assaults” for “providing cool heads and professionalism during these difficult times.”
Essayli said “dangerous rhetoric that ICE agents are ‘kidnapping’ illegal immigrants is being recklessly peddled by politicians and echoed in the media to inflame the public and discredit our courageous federal agents.”
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Protesters face off with police outside a federal building in downtown Los Angeles for an anti-Trump “No Kings Day” demonstration June 14, 2025. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
HSI Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang also decried the scheme, saying, “My office invested valuable time and resources working this alleged kidnapping investigation only to discover that it was a hoax.
“Diverting critical law enforcement resources is not only reckless and irresponsible, but it also endangers the community,” Wang added. “The real cost of a fraud like this is the amount of fentanyl not seized, child predators not removed from the communities and human trafficking victims not rescued because law enforcement redirected resources to recover the defendant.
“We want to assure the public that allegations of criminal activity will be thoroughly investigated by HSI and our law enforcement partners and that those who engage in fraud and deception will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The White House also chimed in on the development. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told Fox News Digital that “the Fake News is so desperate to believe any anti-ICE narrative that they refuse to actually check the facts and instead just echo the lies they’re fed.”
“The truth has come out: this was nothing more than another Fake News Hoax,” she added. “Any outlet that participated in this hoax should be ashamed and apologize to their viewers for lying to them. Trust in the media is at an all time low and this is the perfect example why.”
Read the full article from Here
By Steve Erickson
A Cornish folk-horror reverie where sound and image eclipse story, evoking the erosion of community and the fragility of working-class life.
Rose of Nevada, directed by Mark Jenkin. A special advance screening at Coolidge Corner Theatre on June 23 will feature a post-film discussion with the filmmaker.
George MacKay and Callum Turner in a scene from Rose of Nevada. Photo: Venice Film Festival
To its credit, Rose of Nevada sustains a mood of eerie alienation. The film’s shots seem disconnected, the narrative’s characters trapped in the square frame of the Academy ratio. Cornish director and writer Mark Jenkin shoots and edits in a manner that emphasizes people’s isolation from one another: his cuts don’t neatly suture a story together. Rather, images collide into one another. There is a thematic logic to the approach: the visuals reflect the death of communal spirit in contemporary England. Jenkin set out quite consciously to achieve these strange effects. His cinematography was hand-cranked 16mm. Subliminal mismatches between actors and their voices were exploited because the sound is entirely post-synced. Rose of Nevada continues the aesthetic of Jenkin’s 2022 feature Enys Men (Arts Fuse review) which brought elements of the experimental avant-garde into conversation with British folk-horror.
Set in a fishing village in Cornwall, England, Rose of Nevada is named after a boat. The vessel mysteriously vanished 30 years ago. When it reappears out of the blue, reasonable explanations for its reappearance are scarce. Struggling to support his family in an economically shattered region, Nick (George MacKay) takes a job serving as one of its crew, alongside Liam (Callum Turner). The ship offers a number of ominous portents, including a message carved into the wall. When Nick and Liam emerge from the boat, thinking they’ve headed back home, they find that they have gone through a time loop and returned to 1993. They’re accepted by the townsfolk of the past — because they pretend to be the men who vanished.
“Kneebone Barton,” a track from Rose of Nevada’s soundtrack, features a ship’s horn that unfurls into faint, seemingly endless echoes. Heard on its own, the film’s score, composed by Jenkin, evokes a mood of chilly loneliness, rendering the the story’s fascination with time’s mysteries legible, even without its images. By foregoing live recording, Jenkin crafts an extraordinarily vivid soundscape in which ordinary noises resolve into musical rhythms. Life aboard the ship takes on the cadence of a drum solo—utensils slam against the walls, boots tap in steady patterns. In place of an alarm clock, the captain rouses Nick and Liam by striking a metal pot.
Jenkin, who was also the cinematographer, is enamored with signs of both life and decay. His camera glides over rusted metal and rotting wood, drawing out the beauty in their mottled surfaces. Visually, Rose of Nevada skillfully echoes images from its early passages—a house’s crumbling roof that lets water flood in, foreshadowing events aboard the boat. Day after day, a seagull circles in the bright blue sky above, as if caught in its own loop. The director emphasizes the medium’s focus on physicality, the tangible reality of the narrative’s environments. To that end, he leaves imperfections intact: flashes of light briefly render an actor’s face unreadable, and the beginnings and ends of reels have been left visible at times in the final cut. The soundtrack’s artificiality pulls against the material grain of the images, creating a provocative tension.
The director has long been devoted to filming the Cornish seaside in southern England. His commitment to elevating the region’s culture was recognized by the College of Bards of Gorsedh Kernow. For the first time, in Rose of Nevada, Jenkin introduces introduces recognizable movie stars into his work. But both MacKay and Turner strategically underplay their roles, choosing to recede into their characters rather than assert themselves over lesser-known performers in the cast. Jenkin’s spare script only heightens this demand for restraint.
Jenkin’s turn toward horror has also made his recent films more commercially viable. Distributed by Neon, Enys Men reached American multiplexes—a surprising push for such a singular work. Rose of Nevada, by contrast, sustains a similarly eerie atmosphere but eschews an easily legible narrative. Character recedes in favor of the sensuous force of sound and image. As in his earlier films, Jenkin explores the precariousness of working-class life, though he avoids the blunt metaphors common to much A24 horror. Instead, he relies on the medium’s considerable affective power to evoke the fragility of blue-collar existence. That said, Rose of Nevada is less a story than an assertion of sustained mood—an exceptionally potent one.
Steve Erickson writes about film and music for Gay City News, Slant Magazine, the Nashville Scene, Trouser Press, and other outlets. He also produces electronic music under the tag callinamagician. His latest album, Bells and Whistles, was released in January 2024, and is available to stream here. He presents a biweekly freeform radio show, Radio Not Radio, featuring an eclectic selection of music from around the world.
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