When Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) hit the national stage to rebut President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, she spoke about Biden’s immigration policy, specifically, sex trafficking.
However, the woman Britt was referring to had some issues with what she said.
Karla Jacinto told CNN’s Freedom Project, which seeks to raise awareness about modern-day slavery, “she was trafficked before Biden’s presidency and said legislators lack empathy when using the issue of human trafficking for political purposes.”
“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,” Jacinto said.
Jacinto said both Mexican and American officials have used her for political purposes, CNN reported.
“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. People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude,” Jacinto said.
Jacinto said several things Britt said were not true, including talking to Jacinto when the Alabama senator took office.
“Jacinto said she met the senator at an event at the southern border with other government officials and anti-human-trafficking activists, instead of one-on-one as Britt stated,” CNN reported. “She also said that she was never trafficked in the United States, as Britt appeared to suggest. She was not trafficked by Mexican drug cartels, but by a pimp who operated as part of a family that entrapped vulnerable girls to force them into prostitution.”
Jacinto said she was held captive from 2004 to 2008 — when President George W. Bush, a Republican, was in office and when Biden was a senator.
However, Britt stands by what she said.
Sean Ross, Britt’s communications director, told The Washington PostBritt was talking about Jacinto and disputed that Britt’s language was misleading.
“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,” Britt told CNN.
CNN reported that in a prior statement to CNN, “a spokesperson for Britt’s office neither confirmed nor denied Britt was sharing Jacinto’s account, but said the story the senator told ‘was 100% correct.’”