Yuriana Julia “Juli” Pelaez Calderon is an illegal alien who lives in Los Angeles. On June 30, her family and their lawyers held a press conference at which they told a horrifying story:
Calderon’s family and attorneys held a press conference on June 30, saying armed men ambushed her in two unmarked trucks at a Jack in the Box restaurant parking lot in downtown Los Angeles.
Her family claimed that the men brought Calderon to San Ysidro, where “she was presented to [a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] staffer” and “presented with voluntary self-deportation paperwork,” according to officials.
The family’s attorney claimed that Calderon refused to sign the paperwork and demanded to speak with a judge and a lawyer, but instead was “punished” and held in a warehouse.
Calderon’s daughter created a GoFundMe page:
“My name is Angeline Gonzalez, and my mother, Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon, was taken by masked men in an unmarked vehicle on June 25th,” the since-deleted page read.
Democrats lined up to support Calderon’s claim that she had been “kidnapped,” perhaps by bounty hunters hired by ICE. Mayor Karen Bass bought the story:
The authorities searched for Calderon until she finally was discovered at a local strip mall:
They finally tracked her down in a shopping plaza parking lot in Bakersfield on July 5, when she allegedly continued to claim she’d been kidnapped.
Surveillance footage, however, showed Calderon leaving the Jack in the Box parking lot and getting into a sedan, the feds said.
Phone records also indicated the story was a hoax, according to prosecutors.
“Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon was never arrested or kidnapped by ICE or bounty hunters — this criminal illegal alien scammed innocent Americans for money and diverted limited DHS resources from removing the worst of the worst from Los Angeles communities,” the DHS said.
The agency went on to rip “politicians and activist media” for peddling the hoax “designed to demonize law enforcement and evade accountability.”
So it was all a fraud, perpetrated in the hope that anti-ICE left-wingers would contribute. As they did. Calderon is now being prosecuted, but the real malefactors are Democratic Party politicians like Karen Bass, who use lies to stir up hatred against federal law enforcement. It is bad when the Democrats’ lies lead to fraud, but it will be much worse when, as seems only a matter of time, they lead to murder.
