Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) became overcome with emotion this week describing what she’s heard and seen at the southern border and pleaded with legacy media to cover the reality of the crisis.
Britt has visited the U.S./Mexico border numerous times since winning a U.S. Senate race in Alabama back in 2022, becoming the first woman elected to the body from the state.
“We got to hear women tell us their story and their stories are brutalizing,” Britt told the press. “And to [Texas] Senator [Ted] Cruz’s point, if you’re not telling it, that’s on you, because when a woman sits there and she tells you not just about being raped, but how many times a day she’s raped; when she tells you about having to lay in that bed while they come in and out and in and out, it’s disgusting and it’s despicable.”
“You look at the number of people [who] have died at the border because Joe Biden has made it more and more enticing to come here,” the senator asserted.
“I looked in the eyes of CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) agents who said, ‘We’re exhausted, we’re not only having to be paper pushers, we’re also trying to do what we took an oath of office to do, and that is protect this border.’ But when they tell you about finding small children who have drowned in that river, or pulling a lifeless body of a woman who is pregnant with twins, it changes the way you think about what’s happening.”
“Drug cartels, guys – they have their tentacles all over this country. We need you to start telling that story,” she urged. “Just the other day in Alabama, a gentleman told me, ‘If you will come back here with me in this neighborhood right behind you, you will see migrants who are here illegally, and they will tell you about the drug cartels coming around every other week to collect.’ Guys. That’s not the American dream. That’s an American nightmare.”
“By the end of his tenure, we will have over 10 million people here — which would make that, if you put everybody in one place, the 11th largest state in the United States of America,” she said. “Folks, this is out of control. We’ve got to do something. We would not allow this to happen in a third-world country, we certainly should not allow it to happen in the United States of America.”
After a visit to the border back in March, Britt emphasized that the unsecured border is an “unprecedented national security and humanitarian crisis.”
“Acknowledging there is a problem is the first step to solving it, but unfortunately President Biden won’t even do that,” she said. “The number of Americans dying from fentanyl poisoning is equivalent to a commercial airplane going down in our country every single day … CBP announced it busted a passenger vehicle that was carrying enough fentanyl to kill every single Alabamian 10 times over. It’s past time for action.”
WATCH:
Make no mistake, the crisis at the border is a direct result of the Biden Administration’s failures. pic.twitter.com/InMyZV9YXg
— Senator Katie Boyd Britt (@SenKatieBritt) September 27, 2023
Days after Britt’s impassioned plea on Wednesday, Reuters reported on migrant women being raped as they wait to enter the U.S., as highlighted by The Daily Wire.
Two border cities, Reynosa and Matamoros, have seen record criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals this year, state data stretching back to 2014 shows. Eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers also confirmed the rise in sexual violence to Reuters.
The sexual attacks are often perpetrated by human smugglers who demand cash from migrants. In one tragic case, a woman named Carolina said she arrived in Reynosa on a commercial bus with her 13-year-old son, but she was quickly kidnapped and brought to a house where she and other migrants were raped. At dawn one morning in late May, she was pulled out of the stash house by the men and raped on a broken-down bus. She was released when her family paid a $3,100 ransom.
Mairead Elordi contributed to this report
Related: Migrant Women Are Being Raped At Border As They Wait To Enter United States: Report