The fallout from Sen. Katie Britt’s State of the Union rebuttal continues. The junior senator from Alabama, considered a rising star in the GOP, has been widely panned for her bizarre affect and the tonal whiplash of her speech. But details of one of the more harrowing stories she told, meant to illustrate the human toll of President Joe Biden’s border policies, is under new scrutiny.
“We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days,” Britt said in her response. “When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12.”
Britt goes on to detail the woman’s horrific experience of daily sexual assault. She concludes by saying, “We wouldn’t be OK with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.” Britt’s phrasing fairly clearly implies that the woman’s sexual abuse had taken place in the U.S.
But details of the story, as Britt tells it, and the connection she tries to make between the woman’s horrific experience and Biden’s immigration policies don’t hang together, as independent journalist Jonathan Katz first reported.
In January 2023, Britt traveled to Del Rio with Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Cindy Hyde-Smith. While there, according to a release from Blackburn’s office, they joined a roundtable to learn about “cartel activity in Mexico and the work being done to rescue victims of human trafficking.” The roundtable included activist Karla Jacinto Romero, who had testified before Congress in 2015 about being sex-trafficked in Mexico between 2004 and 2008 when she was between the ages of 12 and 16. At the time of her congressional…
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