In her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union address Thursday night, Sen. Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama, told a story about a Mexican woman who was a victim of sex trafficking at age 12 and blamed it on the current administration.
“President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace,” she said.
The story, while shocking, was highly misleading.
Although Ms. Britt did not name the victim in her speech, she has previously told the story of a woman who, based on congressional testimony, press releases and news reports, appears to be the same person.
This woman, Karla Jacinto Romero, is a Mexican citizen who does not live in the United States and has frequently spoken about her experiences being forced into sexual slavery for four years. In 2023, Ms. Jacinto attended an event near the Texas-Mexico border that was also attended by three senators, including Ms. Britt. In a video released shortly after that trip, Ms. Britt spoke about Ms. Jacinto’s experience.
In her speech on Thursday, Ms Britt spoke about the harrowing story as part of a critique of President Biden’s border policies, saying: “We would not be OK with something like that happening in a third world country.” She added: “This is the United States of America, and I think it’s high time we started acting like it.”
In fact, Ms. Jacinto’s experiences did not occur in the United States, as independent journalist Jonathan Katz first reported on TikTok on Friday. She has testified that she was kidnapped in Mexico City and that her shocking experience of being raped thousands of times took place entirely in Mexico. Additionally, she said the kidnapping took place in 2002 and she was rescued in 2006. Ms. Jacinto continues to live in Mexico and appears never to have lived in the United States or sought asylum here.
In other words, none of this happened during President Biden’s term, nor does it appear to have anything to do with his policies regarding the U.S. border with Mexico. But that didn’t stop the first-term senator from making clear that the president could somehow have prevented it, using rhetoric that appeared designed to stoke public fears about immigration.
“We know that President Biden didn’t just cause this border crisis,” she said. “He invited it.”
Ms. Jacinto did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Ms. Britt, Sean Ross, stood behind her speech.
“The story Senator Britt told was 100 percent accurate,” he said in a statement. “And there are currently more innocent victims of this despicable, brutal human trafficking by the cartels 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 numbers 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 exclusively within another country has to do with U.S. border policy.
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2024-03-09 20:46:19
www.nytimes.com