A federal court sentenced five Cuban nationals and a Florida resident for operating a transnational migrant smuggling network that generated millions of dollars in illicit profits, reported the United States Department of Justice.
The criminal organization, active between 2021 and 2025, induced thousands of Cubans to illegally cross the southern border or to enter using forged travel authorizations, charging between 1,500 and 40,000 dollars per person. In some cases, the operators even arranged private flights to transport groups of migrants.
Liannys Yaiselys Vega Pérez, 27 years old, received the harshest sentence: four years in prison. As the main operator of the fraudulent migration benefits scheme, she personally submitted hundreds of false asylum applications and coordinated the logistics of international transfers. She pleaded guilty to four charges, including conspiracy to smuggle migrants for profit and international money laundering.
Layra Libertad Treto Santos, 30 years old, was sentenced to 30 months. The accusation revealed that she used the network's services to enter the country along with family members, in addition to submitting fraudulent asylum applications as an employee and manager of the organization.
The other four sentenced individuals —Miguel Martínez Vasconcelos (31 years old), Luis Emmanuel Escalona Marrero (32), Walbis Pozo Dutel (32), and Emanuel Martínez González (29)— each received two years in prison. Escalona was the one who coordinated the clandestine shipment of Cuban passports from Mexico to avoid their confiscation at the border.
Among the more sophisticated methods used online was the submission of fraudulent applications to the ESTA visa waiver program, reserved for citizens of countries with special agreements with Washington, such as Spain. Cuba is not eligible for this program, but the organization was producing European citizenship documents and falsely declaring that the applicants had not set foot on the island since 2011.
The network was openly advertised on social media, directly attracting clients in Cuba.
In total, the organization was responsible for more than 1,700 fraudulent asylum applications and laundered over 22 million dollars through multiple shell companies. Only in commercial flights, between July 2022 and November 2024, it spent more than 600,000 dollars with a single airline.
"These defendants turned illegal immigration into a multimillion-dollar criminal enterprise, trafficking people into the United States to line their pockets and laundering millions in illicit profits to conceal their operations," stated Deputy Attorney General A. Tysen Duva from the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice.
The case is part of a broader indictment against 12 people, filed in September 2025. Two other defendants —Yuniel Lima Santos and Gisleivy Peralta Consuegra— have already pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing, while Lázaro Alain Cabrera Rodríguez was found guilty by a jury in September and faces up to 20 years in prison at a hearing scheduled for December 17.
Two more individuals involved, Marianny Lucía López Torres and Frandy Aragón Díaz, remain at large.
The case was processed under Operation Recover America and the Joint Task Force Alpha of the Department of Justice, which to date has achieved more than 486 international and domestic arrests and over 447 convictions in the United States related to human trafficking networks.
Este caso forma parte de un panorama migratorio en constante cambio. Sigue toda la actualidad sobre procesos legales, deportaciones y políticas fronterizas en nuestra sección de
Related videos:
Filed under: