Sex trafficking, I think, is waaay overblown. What did these girls think when told they'd be smuggled for stripping? There might be something a little more?
Actually, a lot of Cubans are desperate to get to the USA before relations with Cuba are fully normalized and the wet foot/dry foot asylum program is ended. There are also a lot of Cuban dissidents actively trying to remove people from the Dictatorship, and stripping is a minimal skills job that the girls found plausible. Unfortunately, it also shows that there monsters out there who will exploit and take advantage of anyone. No matter how vulnerable and trusting.
I wonder how many other Cuban dancers are dancing to pay off their smuggler's fees - when I lived in Dallas I met some Mexican girls in a similar predicament and I thought it was sad as fuck - IDK if the Mexican girls I met in Dallas were stripping to make more $$$ to pay off the debt faster or if they were forced to strip to come up w/ the $$$ faster -at least the Cuban chicks get asylum as soon as they set foot in the US so they have legal backup; but the Mexican girls were illegals and probably had no or not much legal-recourse.
^ yeah - new arrivals do that b/c they have left a lot of family back-home - so it's more to see family and help them out (buy stuff they need) rather than a leisure vacation
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