Details of a graphic story Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL.) told in her response to President Biden’s State of the Union on Thursday left viewers puzzled, as it emerged that the lurid tale of sex trafficking and rape she used to highlight Biden’s immigration policies occurred in Mexico during President George W. Bush’s administration.
Britt didn’t back away from the anecdote on Sunday and declined to state that the incident in question had not occurred during the Biden administration, Politico reports. “Did you mean to give the impression that this horrible story happened on President Biden’s watch?” asked Fox News' Shannon Bream asked. Britt's reply:
“No … I very specifically said, this is what President Biden did during his first 100 days. Minutes after coming into office, he stopped all deportations. He halted construction of the border wall, and he said I am going to give amnesty to millions. Those types of things act as a magnet to have more and more people here."
When asked to clarify that the incident did not occur during the Biden administration, Britt said: “I very clearly said, I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked, when she was 12. So I didn’t say a teenager, I didn’t say a young woman, a grown woman, a woman when she was trafficked when she was 12.”
The blowback over Britt’s anecdote drew attention from the intended purpose of the speech, to counter Biden’s remarks. Former Associated Press reporter Jonathan Katz drew attention to the cloudy details of the story in a TikTok video, indicating the woman in question was Karla Jacinto Romero, who met with Britt and two other senators in 2023. Romero testified before Congress in 2015 about her experiences a decade earlier with sex trafficking in Mexico.