Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt is under fire for using her supposed experience as a sex trafficking victim in the early 2000s to criticize President Joe Biden and his border policies.
Brit gave to Republicans rebuttal In response to Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress this week.
In his rebuttal, Britt said, del rio The Texas border area she painted A seemingly personal conversation with a survivor of mass sex trafficking in the United States.
“So I talked to a woman and she shared her story with me,” Britt said in the video. “She had been sex trafficked by the cartel since she was 12 years old.”
The victims Britt mentioned were Carla Jacinto RomeroShe was a victim of sex trafficking in Mexico, not the United States, as the senator suggested, from 2004 to 2008, two decades before Democrat Biden became president.
journalist Jonathan Katz Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s experience was first pieced together in a TikTok video.
Britt seemed to be trying to present this anecdote as an abhorrent example of Biden’s border controls.
“We would not tolerate something like this happening in a third world country,” she added. “President Biden’s border policies are disgraceful. This crisis is despicable.”
But Jacinto Romero was not a victim of sex trafficking in the United States as a result of Biden’s border policies. Because Biden was not president from 2004 to 2008, and because she was a sex trafficker in Mexico.
Katz accused Britt of letting Jacinto Romero divulge his experiences personally.
“Britt tells this story as if he were sitting on the banks of the Rio Grande, as if holding his hand, as if making him tell a story that he wouldn’t tell anyone else,” he said. said.
Instead, he added, Jacinto Romero is a public advocate for sex trafficking and has repeatedly shared her story publicly to shine a light on the issue.Jacinto Romero iss testified to the usa meetingThe Mexican House of Representatives and the Vatican, according to a short 2015 profile in U.S. House of Representatives documents.
Britt visited the Del Rio area. January 2023 Traveling with Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.). During that trip, Jacinto Romero attended a press conference with Britt, Blackburn, and Hyde-Smith, where she publicly told her story of gruesome sex trafficking.
Since this anecdote was exposed as misguided, Britt has faced a barrage of criticism online, making the previous situation even worse. disapproval Regarding the content of her rebuttal.
“So Katie Britt wasn’t just a fiery embarrassment. She was also an outright liar. The best person in Alabama!” political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote in X. Ta post.
Ornstein is part of a broad choir journalist and others Blasted Britt’s storytelling.
“This was old Alabama politics. It was politics of fear and chaos,” said Alabama columnist Kyle Whitmire. I have written “Mr. Britt blamed Mr. Biden for an assault that appears to have occurred 20 years ago. Mr. Britt’s press secretary would not give a definitive answer when asked.”
Christine Pelosi, a political strategist and daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, made the demand at a rally Saturday. ×post Britt apologized for “lying about a horrific incident of sexual assault that you used for political purposes.”
Sean Ross, a spokesperson for Sen. Britt, did not deny that Jacinto Romero is a survivor of the sex trafficking in question, but further emphasized Britt’s story.
“Senator Britt was 100% correct,” Ross said in a statement to CNBC. “But now, more than ever, there are more innocent victims of this type of hateful and brutal human trafficking by cartels.”
Sex trafficking is happening in the United States under the Biden administration, but Jacinto Romero’s sex trafficking story is not an example of that.
A 2015 House document reads: “Today, Carla is a happy and successful mother of two beautiful girls, a wife, a student, and an international activist.”
