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Cecilia says that when she arrived in Miami, she started looking for jobs right away.

She looked for a job in a hair salon, but she didn't have a license, and she was undocumented.

This was in 2000.

She was 27.

Her plan was to work for three months in the United States, make as much money as possible, and then fly home to Argentina just before her visa expired.

But four days before her flight home, Cecilia was arrested.

And how did life get better when you could start getting your clients online so that you weren't?

She says the internet helped a lot.

Cecilia could now look someone up before deciding whether to meet them.

And sex workers in Miami could communicate on forums and warn each other about police, violent clients, or clients that wouldn't pay.

They would ID clients by phone number in case they'd given a fake name.

SESTA and FOSTA, which stands for the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, are a set of bills that were signed into law in 2018.

Under the law, website publishers, including sites like Craigslist, would be responsible if anyone posts ads for sex work on their platforms.

The bill's supporters frame this as an important way to curb sex trafficking online.

Critics argue that it makes no distinction between victims of sex trafficking and consensual sex workers.

One of the immediate effects of the law was that those sites that sex workers use to find clients and communicate with each other started shutting down.

Are sex workers less safe without these types of sites?

Of course.