Questions arise about Britt’s State of the Union response

In her response to President Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday evening, Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, told a story about a Mexican woman who was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 12 and blamed it on those in power. administration.

“President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace,” she said.

The story, while heartbreaking, was deeply misleading.

Although Ms. Britt did not name the victim in her speech, she previously told the story of a woman who appears to be the same person based on congressional testimony, press releases and news reports.

That woman, Karla Jacinto Romero, is a Mexican citizen who does not live in the United States and has spoken often about her experiences being forced into sexual slavery for four years. In 2023, Ms. Jacinto participated in an event near the Texas-Mexico border was also attended by three senators, including Mrs. Britt. In a video Released shortly after that trip, Ms. Britt discussed Ms. Jacinto’s experiences.

In her speech Thursday, Ms. Britt spoke about the harrowing story as part of a critique of President Biden’s border policies, saying that “we would not be okay with this happening in a Third World country.” She added that “this is the United States of America, and in my opinion it is time for us to start acting like it.”

In fact, as first reported by the independent journalist Jonathan Katz on TikTok Friday, Ms. Jacinto’s experiences did not take place in the United States. She has stated that she was kidnapped in Mexico City and that her harrowing experience of thousands of rapes took place entirely in Mexico. Moreover, she has said that the kidnapping took place in 2002 and that she was rescued in 2006. Ms. Jacinto still lives in Mexico and does not appear to have ever lived in the United States or sought asylum here.

In other words, none of this happened during President Biden’s administration, nor does it appear to have anything to do with his policy toward the U.S. border with Mexico. But that didn’t stop the first-term senator from forcefully implying that the president could have somehow prevented this, using rhetoric that seemed tailored to stoke public fear about immigration.

“We know that President Biden did not create this border crisis alone,” she said. “He invited it.”

Ms. Jacinto did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Ms. Britt, Sean Ross, stood by her speech.

“The story Senator Britt told was 100 percent correct,” he said in a statement. “And there are more innocent victims of that kind of disgusting, brutal human trafficking by the cartels right now than ever before. The Biden administration’s policies — policies in this country that the president falsely claims are humane — have empowered the cartels and acted as a magnet for historic levels of migrants making the dangerous journey to our border. ”

He did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about what direct responsibility Mr. Biden had for what Ms. Jacinto experienced or what an anecdote about sex trafficking entirely within another country has to do with U.S. border policy.