I admit, I’m confused about all the furor over Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt’s Republican rebuttal to the State of the Union address.
Criticism of the speech by the youngest Republican woman elected to the Senate ranged from where the speech took place — her kitchen table — to its wholesomeness, according to The Guardian.
Maybe I’m part of a minority, but as a mom myself, Britt spoke to me. I found myself leaning forward involuntarily when she talked into the camera about the price of groceries and the future of our children, issues that are close to my heart.
After an hour and a half of watching President Joe Biden rant like a drunk uncle after Thanksgiving dinner about the state of Ukraine, Cookie Monster, and how many fewer chips are in a bag, it felt good for the soul to sit in the kitchen with someone who felt like a friend who knew what I was going through.
But regardless of how she spoke, the biggest criticism Britt received was not at all accurate.
Speaking about the border crisis and particularly the danger of human trafficking, the 42-year-old senator told the story of a woman she had met.
“She was a victim of sex trafficking by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not only that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped,” Britt said in her speech.
“The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoebox of a room, and sent men through that door, over and over, for hours and hours at a time,” she recalled. “We would not agree if this happened in a third world country. This is the United States of America, and it’s time we started acting like it.”
Britt used the harrowing story to condemn the administration’s “lax immigration and border policies.”
Shortly after the speech, former AP reporter Jonathan Katz revealed that the story Britt referred to was that of Karla Jacinto Romero, a prominent anti-trafficking activist who was victimized in Mexico in 2004, nearly two decades before Biden takes office.
In a TikTok video, Katz said, “This senator has been going around telling the story over and over again, as if she was describing actions that took place on or even near the US border during Joe’s presidency Biden,” adding, “It goes beyond misleading.” ,” according to the UK’s Daily Mail.
But Katz himself admitted in the video that everything Britt said was true.
According to a press release from Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s office, Senator Britt visited the Del Rio border sector of Texas in January 2023, accompanied by fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn and Hyde-Smith herself.
The release states that during this trip, the senators participated in a roundtable discussion with former Mexican congresswoman Rosa María de la Garza, Fox News contributor Sara Carter, and Jacinto Romero, the human trafficking survivor whom Britt reported shared the story.
The roundtable allowed senators to gain insight into cartel operations in Mexico and ongoing efforts to rescue victims of trafficking and exploitation, the Daily Mail reported.
Immigration was a key priority for Britt during his first term in the Senate.
When asked about the controversy, Britt responded: “Well, I made it very clear that I spoke to a woman who told me about being trafficked when she was 12 years old. So I didn’t say a teenager, I didn’t say a young woman. An adult woman – a woman – when she was a victim of trafficking, when she was 12 years old.”
Britt’s reason for using the decades-old story was as a broader illustration of the evils of sex trafficking and cartel activity that she said have worsened in the context of the immigration crisis at the southern border.
None of this can reasonably be interpreted to mean that this necessarily happened under Biden.
Instead of focusing on the horrific history of what the cartels are capable of, Democrats focused on when it happened.
According to a Reuters article published in September, migrants crossing the Mexican border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros in an attempt to seek asylum in the United States are facing shockingly high rates of sexual violence, according to Mexican government data, groups humanitarian aid, and interviews with survivors.
Criminal organizations like the Gulf Cartel are taking advantage of this, kidnapping migrants for ransom if they arrive without the protection of a trafficker. “Rape is part of the process of torture to get money,” one expert said.
Survivors tell horrific stories of being held captive, with cartel members selecting women at will to be raped. A woman said she was repeatedly assaulted by a drug dealer in exchange for suspected deliveries of narcotics to her captors.
Did a Democrat speak out for these women?
Sure, the example Britt used was dated, but she used it for its graphic nature, which Jacinto Romero had the courage to share but reflects the experience of many women who are trafficked across the border or attacked while trying to cross it, that they will never talk about it.
Who speaks for these women? Is the #Metoo movement just the privilege of celebrities?
This is the same mentality that drove Democrats mad when Biden used the “wrong” label to describe the alleged killer of Georgia student Laken Riley, dismissing the fact that he called the murder victim by the wrong name.
By focusing on the details, Democrats hope they can distract voters enough to make them miss the forest for the trees.
Whether the specific example Britt cites occurred 20 years ago or more recently is ultimately irrelevant.
The fundamental truths she was highlighting – that girls are still systematically abused in unfathomable ways and that current policies allow these atrocities to persist – should be the focus of attention.
The real source of embarrassment are the people who try to hide this true human tragedy in the mud of the partisan melee.
This article originally appeared in The Western Journal.