The Black Lives Matter summer of 2020 spawned a series of hate crime hoaxes designed to make racism seem worse than it was. Now, we are seeing a surge in deportation hoaxes, as activists and politicians do all they can to keep criminal illegal immigrants from being deported.

This new trend appears to have started in Los Angeles, with Yuriana Julia Pelaez Calderon. An attorney representing her family held a press conference on June 30 to declare that masked men had kidnapped Calderon in an unmarked van on her way to work. She was allegedly presented with self-deportation paperwork and then sent to a warehouse after demanding to speak to an attorney. Her family asked for $4,500 in a GoFundMe campaign.