Alabama Republican Sen. Katie Britt is under fire for using what appears to be a sex trafficking victim’s experience from the early 2000s to condemn President Joe Biden and his border policy.
Britt gave up on the GOP refusal in Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress this week.
During his denial, Britt referred to a visit to Del Rio sector of the Texas border where he is depicted an apparently personal conversation with a survivor of sex trafficking by gangs in the US
“That’s where I talked to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said in the video. “She was sex trafficked by cartels starting at the age of 12.”
What Britt refers to as a victim is Karla Jacinto Romerowho was trafficked for sex in Mexico — not the United States, as the senator suggested — from 2004 to 2008, twenty years before Democrat Biden became president.
The journalist Jonathan Katz first compiled Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s experience into a TikTok video.
Britt apparently attempted to present the anecdote as a damning example of Biden’s border management.
“We will not be okay if this happens in a third-world country,” he added. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.”
But Jacinto Romero didn’t experience sex trafficking in the US as a result of Biden’s border policy — because he wasn’t president from 2004 to 2008 and because he was sex trafficked to Mexico.
Katz criticized Britt for implying that Jacinto Romero disclosed his experiences in private.
“Britt said it like she was sitting on the banks of the Rio Grande, like holding his hand, like getting him to tell the story he wouldn’t tell anyone else,” he said.
Instead, he added, Jacinto Romero is a public advocate for sex trafficking and has repeatedly shared his story publicly to shed light on the issue. Jacinto Romeros testified for us Congressthe Mexican House of Representatives and the Vatican, according to a brief 2015 profile in a US House of Representatives document.
Britt visited the Del Rio area in January 2023 on a joint trip with Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Cindy Hyde-Smith, R-Miss. During that trip, Jacinto Romero appeared at a press conference with Britt, Blackburn and Hyde-Smith where he went public with his harrowing story of sex-trafficking.
Britt has faced a flurry of online criticism since the anecdote was exposed as misplaced, compounding the past disagree about his rebuttal’s delivery.
“So Katie Britt isn’t just a burning shame. She’s also an out and out liar. Best in Alabama!” wrote political scientist Norman Ornstein in an X post.
Ornstein is part of a wider chorus of journalists and others slapping Britt on her storytelling.
“This is old Alabama politics. The politics of fear and confusion,” Alabama columnist Kyle Whitmire wrote at X. “Britt blamed Biden for an attack that apparently happened 20 years ago. His spokesman would not give a clear answer when asked.”
Christine Pelosi, political strategist and daughter of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, asked on a Saturday X post with Britt apologizing “for lying about this horrific case of sexual violence that you exploited for political purposes.”
Sean Ross, spokesman for Sen. Britt, who referred to Jacinto Romero as a sex-trafficking survivor but doubled down on Britt’s story.
“The story that Senator Britt told is 100% correct,” Ross said in a statement to CNBC. “But there are more innocent victims of that kind of despicable, brutal trafficking by the cartels than ever before.”
Although sex trafficking occurred in the US under the Biden administration, Jacinto Romero’s sex-trafficking story is not an example of it.
“Today, Karla is a happy and successful mother of two beautiful girls, a wife, a student, and an international activist,” read the 2015 House document.
