The Uruguayan government warned on Wednesday about a growing trend of sexual exploitation of Cuban women who are using the country as a stopover on their way to the United States, according to the first national report on trafficking presented by the National Council for the Prevention and Combat of Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons.
The document, covering the period from March 2025 to June 2026, notes that "there has been a strong trend recently of Cuban women using Uruguay as a transit country to the United States."
Of the 37 women attended to in 2025 by the trafficking service of the National Institute of Women (Inmujeres), 5% were Cuban, 39% were Dominican, and 42% were Uruguayan. More than half —63%— were connected to international trafficking networks, primarily for sexual exploitation purposes.
The report warns that criminal networks have shifted their recruitment methods to digital platforms and messaging applications, complicating the identification of those responsible and the gathering of evidence. According to the document, the organizations "operate in such a way that hinders recognition of the situation and reporting it, as they do not identify a physical location or the individuals committing this crime."
Among the emerging trends, the report notes a "marked increase in recruitment through social media and fraudulent job offers," as well as the use of cryptocurrencies to conceal illicit payments and surrogacy as a new form of exploitation.
The profile of migrant victims differs from that of Uruguayans: according to the document, foreign women "mostly with higher education, recognize recruitment and deception, and find themselves in a situation of sexual exploitation, which is experienced with shame and concealment of the situation."
The issue is "on the rise," the report concludes, driven by "the conditions of high vulnerability and exposure that are occurring in certain international migration situations and the growth of networks linked to organized crime in the country."
This phenomenon is not new. In 2018, the Civil Association El Paso reported that at least 20 Cuban women had been forced into prostitution in Uruguay, lured with false job promises and transported through Suriname or Guyana. In 2021, an operation with Interpol dismantled a network that used the Havana–Guyana–Brazil–Uruguay route and arrested 34 individuals; some migrants paid between $6,000 and $7,000 to continue to the U.S.
A study by the International Organization for Migration on cases between 2018 and 2022 revealed that Cuban women accounted for 17.6% of the foreign victims of trafficking in Uruguay, and that Cuba was the source country in 15.8% of the identified international trafficking cases.
The migratory context exacerbates the problem. In 2025, Uruguay recorded a migratory balance of nearly 15,000 Cubans, almost three times that of 2024, and issued 13,852 identity documents for the first time to citizens from the Island, the highest figure among all foreign nationalities.
In the judicial arena, Uruguayan Justice charged 81 individuals in 2025 for trafficking offenses or associated criminal figures, and there were 65 convictions for sexual exploitation and five for forced labor and reduction to slavery.
The situation is further complicated by ongoing negotiations: The U.S. is negotiating with Uruguay the return of deported Cubans to the country, which adds a political dimension to the already complex Cuban migration landscape in the region.
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