Rabat, April 24 -- When Samira Ahmad (not her real name) left her native Morocco and got on a bus to Spain in April 2018, she felt a mix of pride and self-fulfillment. She had made the final cut of Moroccan women selected to join Spain's prized strawberry industry as seasonal workers .

As she embarked on her Spanish journey to register as a migrant worker just miles away from Morocco, Ahmad told a Guardian reporter , she thought the opportunity was the happy ending she had been expecting, having struggled to make ends meet for herself and her family.

To Ahmad's unpleasant surprise, however, the work and the environment she was promised were the total opposite of the labor exploitation and other inhumane treatment she and many other comp...