Sex trafficking survivor slams Britt for inaccurate story in SOTU response
“And I think [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude,” Karla Jacinto Romero said.
Karla Jacinto Romero, the woman whose story Sen. Katie Britt appeared to have shared in the Republican response to the State of the Union last week, slammed the Alabama senator for inaccurately using her story to highlight Joe Biden’s immigration policies.
“In fact I hardly ever cooperate with politicians because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo, and that to me is not fair,” Romero told CNN on Sunday.
During the Republican response to the State of the Union on Thursday, Britt told a graphic story involving sex trafficking and rape to criticize Biden’s immigration policies.
“When I first took office, I did something different. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas, where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12,” Britt said. “President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace. It’s despicable. And it’s almost entirely preventable.”
An independent reporter later revealed in a TikTok video that the woman in question was Romero, who met with Britt and two other senators in January 2023. The story Britt was referencing occurred during President George W. Bush’s administration, when Biden was still a senator. Romero testified before Congress back in 2015 about her experiences a decade earlier with sex trafficking in Mexico.
During a Fox News interview on Sunday, Britt defended her use of the graphic story and declined to clearly state that the incident in question had not occurred during the Biden administration.
Romero also told CNN that Britt told an inaccurate story of Romero’s experience. Romero said that she was trafficked by a pimp who operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls to force them into prostitution, not by Mexican drug cartels. Romero also said that she was never trafficked in the United States, as Britt suggested.
“I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic — all the governors, all the senators — to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time,” Romero said. “People who are really trafficked and abused, as [Britt] mentioned. And I think [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/katie-britt-state-of-the-union-00146221
WOAT week for the GOP.
