The White House reprimanded Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) on Sunday after several news outlets fact-checked part of her rebuttal to President Biden’s State of the Union in which she told the story of a migrant who had been sexually assaulted.
“Instead of telling more debunked lies to justify his opposition to the toughest bipartisan border legislation in modern history, Senator Britt should stop choosing human smugglers and fentanyl traffickers over our National Security and Border Patrol Union,” Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement. “As President Biden said in his State of the Union, ‘We have a simple choice: We can fight to fix the border or we can fix it.’”
Britt used much of his rebuttal to criticize Biden over his handling of the southern border. To illustrate her point, she described how she met a woman on the US-Mexico border who described being raped thousands of times during a sex trafficking operation carried out by cartels, starting from age 12.
“We would not agree to this happening in a third world country. This is the United States of America and it’s about time we start acting like them,” Britt said in his Thursday night speech. “President Biden’s border crisis is a disgrace.”
But independent journalist Jonathan Katz first reported that the woman Britt was talking about was not linked to the Biden administration’s policies and that her abuse did not take place in the United States The Associated Press, Washington Post and other media outlets all confirmed that Britt’s story referred to Karla Jacinto Romero, who testified before Congress in 2015 about being forced to work in Mexican brothels from 2004 to 2008.
A spokesperson for Britt confirmed to these outlets that she was talking about Romero, but disputed that the senator’s language was misleading. Britt met Romero during a trip to the border in 2023.
In a “Fox News Sunday” interview with Shannon Bream, Britt dismissed the criticismsaying this story is symbolic of the president’s border policies.
The White House criticized Britt and other Republicans for opposing a bipartisan border security bill in the Senate that would have provided additional resources to the Border Patrol, ended “catch and release” policies water” and tightened restrictions on asylum and the number of migrants who can enter the country.
The bill was authored by Senators James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), but Republican lawmakers lined up to oppose it after former President Trump discouraged them from voting. for that.
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