The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Western District of Texas (W.D. Texas) issued a press release this week headlined “Illegal Alien Who Forced Three Cuban Women to Work in Strip Clubs Sentenced to Over 17 Years in Federal Prison”. This sad and infuriating tale is a case study in how illegal immigration really works — and it reveals how hard often-maligned immigration officers are working to save migrants from their “American nightmares”.
U.S. v. Tome-Rojas
On June 4, 2025, a grand jury in the W.D. Texas handed down an indictment in U.S. v. Tome-Rojas, charging the defendant, Yoirlan Tome-Rojas, with three counts of trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1590(a) and two counts of Social Security card alteration in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 408.
The indictment alleged that Tome-Rojas knowingly recruited, provided, harbored, or obtained “by any means” three victims — “Y.S.C.”, “L.M.M.Q.”, and “Y.M.M.” — “for labor or services” in violation of the first federal statute, and bought Social Security cards for Y.S.C. and L.M.M.Q. to which they were not entitled, in violation of the second.
“Operation Take Back America”
This case was investigated under a March 2025 initiative announced by then-Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Todd Blanche (who later replaced Pam Bondi as attorney general this April), “Operation Take Back America” (OTBA).
As a memo from the DAG at the time explained, Operation Take Back America was implemented in part to support joint DHS and DOJ Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) established under section 6 of Executive Order (EO) 14159, “Protecting the American People Against Invasion”, issued by the president the day he returned to office.
Subsection 6(c) of EO 14159 states:
The objective of each HSTF is to end the presence of criminal cartels, foreign gangs, and transnational criminal organizations throughout the United States, dismantle cross-border human smuggling and trafficking networks, end the scourge of human smuggling and trafficking, with a particular focus on such offenses involving children, and ensure the use of all available law enforcement tools to faithfully execute the immigration laws of the United States. [Emphasis added.]
In June 2025, the Columbia Undergraduate Law Review complained that EO 14159 “is targeted towards reinforcing the Trump campaign’s promise to hammer down on deporting illegal aliens”, though I suppose it is to the students’ credit that they took a pass on directly criticizing Trump’s opposition to human trafficking.
“Cuban Man Pleads Guilty to Labor Trafficking”
Which is likely a good thing, because while the criminal indictment in Tome-Rojas is cold and bloodless, the facts underlying those charges are anything but.
As the USAO for the W.D. Texas explained in a June 3 press release announcing the defendant’s plea in the case to the three labor trafficking charges:
According to court documents, Yoirlan Tome-Rojas, 46, helped bring three adult females from Cuba to the U.S. by paying for their flights, drivers, hotels, and the coyotes who smuggled them across the U.S.-Mexico border. Tome-Rojas charged the women a travel debt up to $50,000 each and forced them to work in strip clubs seven days a week. Throughout the months the women were in his custody, he transported them to Indiana, Detroit, Michigan, and San Antonio for them to work in various clubs. [Emphasis added.]
Border Releases, CBP One, and the CHNV Parole Program
Note that the offenses alleged in counts 1 and 2 in the indictment (in which Y.S.C. and L.M.M.Q. were listed as victims) occurred between December 1, 2023, and March 14, 2024, and that count 3 (Y.M.M.) described conduct that occurred between March 1 and 14, 2024 — that is, under the Biden administration.
At that time, not only were Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas releasing tens of thousands of migrants who had crossed the Southwest border illegally per month on their own recognizance, but they were also running two extra-statutory programs that facilitated the entry of hundreds of thousands of other inadmissible Cuban nationals, in particular.
The first program allowed 1,450 would-be illegal migrants in Mexico per day to schedule appointments for interviews and (in most cases) release at Southwest border ports using the CBP One app, a program I dubbed the “CBP One app interview scheme”.
According to the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics (OHSS), of the more than 900,000 aliens who scheduled appointments using the app, nearly 182,000 were Cuban nationals like Y.S.C., L.M.M.Q., and Y.M.M.
The second Biden/Mayorkas program, “CHNV Parole”, allowed up to 30,000 nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela — none of whom had visas or any right to enter the United States — per month to apply online with USCIS and receive advance permission to fly directly into U.S. airports and be released on two-year periods of “parole”.
As of the end of November 2024, more than 110,000 additional Cuban nationals had entered the United States under CHNV Parole.
In other words, even if they didn’t have lawful visas that would have permitted them to enter, it’s not as if the three victims didn’t have other options, raising the question of what (false) promises Tome-Rojas may have made to the three.
That said, what happened in this case could have happened — and likely repeatedly did happen — in untold numbers of CHNV parole cases.
In August 2023, I described that program as “ripe for human exploitation” and suggested it should be termed the “Traffickers’ Relief Act” because of its reliance on “sponsors” in the United States to present themselves as willing to look after potential beneficiaries.
As I explained at the time, USCIS had warned would-be CHNV beneficiaries that they were “not obligated to repay, reimburse, work for, serve, marry, or otherwise compensate their supporter”, which suggested such abuses had already occurred.
I continued:
Of course, not everyone in one of those four countries has the money to pay the supporter upfront, so it is possible — if not likely — that many of those beneficiaries would agree to work to pay off that money once here. And that’s where the trafficking aspect comes in.
I trust you won’t be surprised to learn that it is not uncommon for such shady employment agreements to devolve quickly into debt bondage. The trafficker provides housing, which ups the amount owed, and then food and clothing, which adds to the tab. Soon, trafficking victims are trapped in a debt spiral from which they cannot escape, and the terms become more onerous. [Emphasis added.]
“Prohibited Them from Leaving Until their Travel Debts Were Paid Off”
Which brings me to the following passage from the latest W.D. Texas press release on this case:
Tome-Rojas required the women to provide him with all of their earnings and prohibited them from leaving or ending their work until their respective travel debts were paid off. He continually added the cost of food, clothes, shelter, transportation, and more to their travel debts.
Two of the women were with Tome-Rojas for approximately three months and, according to Tome-Rojas, only paid approximately $1,000 toward their debt. Throughout their victimization, the women feared for their own safety and for the safety of their families in Cuba. [Emphasis added.]
None of this should suggest I am a seer or inordinately wise; as anyone with any knowledge of illicit immigration can tell you, such “debt bondage” relationships are part and parcel of many (if not most) smuggling schemes involving migrants who cannot pay their full fees upfront.
Which is just one more reason why the Biden administration’s “catch and release” border policies were as sad and infuriating as the facts of this case.
As loathsome and despicable as Tome-Rojas’s offenses were, untold numbers of coyotes subjected — and likely continue to subject — countless numbers of migrants they brought to the Southwest border while Biden and Mayorkas’s policies were in effect to much, much worse.
Kudos to EO 14159 and the Homeland Security Task Forces
Which is why section 6(c) of EO 14159, the provision that directed the HSTFs to locate the smugglers and dismantle their networks, was so timely and critical after the abuses of the prior four years.
In the United States right now, migrants who came illegally under the last administration are still being forced to do whatever their smugglers tell them to do in agriculture, sweatshops, construction — and yes, “strip clubs” and brothels — to pay “debts” that are constantly rising and hence can never be fulfilled.
Immigration officers are often depicted as the “bad guys” because they are denying aliens the “American dream”. The truth is, many migrants were sold a bill of goods by their smugglers, and their reality is closer to a Boschian hellscape. Kudos to the agents and attorneys of the Homeland Security Task Forces, who are working to bring those nightmares to an end.