Sen. Katie Britt blasted for Biden rebuttal sex traffic claim

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 the GOP rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address to Congress this week.

During her rebuttal, Britt referenced a visit to the Del Rio sector of the Texas border where she depicted a seemingly personal conversation with someone who had survived sex trafficking by groups in the U.S.

“That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said in the video. “She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12.”

The victim Britt referenced was Karla Jacinto Romero, who was sex trafficked in Mexico — not the United States, as the senator suggested — from 2004 to 2008, twenty years before the Democrat Biden became president.

The journalist Jonathan Katz first pieced together Britt’s presentation of Jacinto Romero’s experience in a TikTok video.

Britt seemingly attempted to present the anecdote as a damning example of Biden’s border management.

“We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a third-world country,” she added. “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace. This crisis is despicable.”

But Jacinto Romero did not experience sex trafficking in the U.S. as a result of Biden’s border policy — because he was not president from 2004 to 2008 and because she was sex trafficked in Mexico.

Katz slammed Britt for the implication that Jacinto Romero divulged her experiences privately.

“Britt tells it like she’s sitting by the banks of the Rio Grande, like holding her hand, like getting her to tell the story that she won’t tell anyone else,” he said.

Instead, he added, Jacinto Romero is a public advocate for sex trafficking and has repeatedly shared her story publicly to shed light on the issue. Jacinto Romero has…