{"id":295025,"date":"2025-07-27T04:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-27T04:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/295025\/"},"modified":"2025-07-27T04:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-27T04:39:12","slug":"sexile-in-the-united-states-hundreds-of-transgender-americans-seek-refuge-from-trump-in-canada-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/295025\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Sexile\u2019 in the United States: Hundreds of transgender Americans seek refuge from Trump in Canada | U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn the first 24 hours after Trump\u2019s re-election, we received 1,177 requests for assistance from the United States. Fifty-one percent of these requests were from trans people: 35% from trans women, 16% from trans men,\u201d says Timothy Chan, spokesperson for Rainbow Railroad, an NGO with offices in Canada and the U.S. that helps LGBTQ+ people experiencing persecution and violence start a life in another country. Panicked by a government that threatens their civil rights, many LGBTQ+ Americans, especially trans people, are seeking to immigrate to Canada. Some are even requesting humanitarian asylum<\/a>. Hannah Kreager, a 22-year-old American, is one of them.<\/p>\n

Three months ago, Kreager decided it was time to leave her country. \u201cThe [U.S.] federal government is threatening to criminalize trans identities,\u201d she explains. So, in April, she drove 1,000 miles from her hometown of Tucson, Arizona, to Calgary, in the Canadian province of Alberta, where she has lived ever since.<\/p>\n

Like her, many American citizens have considered fleeing to their northern neighbor. The avalanche of aid requests received by Rainbow Railroad represents \u201cthe largest number received in a single day from a single country,\u201d Chan notes. To put this in perspective, at the height of the Afghanistan crisis<\/a> (in August 2021), the peak number of daily requests was 119.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo far in 2025, we have received 3,524 applications from U.S. residents; a 994% increase compared to the same period last year,\u201d Chan emphasizes. To give an idea of the scale of the crisis, the organization receives an average of 10,000 applications annually from around the world. This NGO \u2014 whose name recalls the Underground Railroad<\/a>, the network of secret routes established in the 18th century to transport Black people from slave-owning areas of the U.S. to abolitionist territories \u2014 has been collaborating since June 2023 with the Canadian Government\u2019s Refugee Assisted Program, through which various organizations submit to the Canadian government the profiles of potential refugees seeking to settle in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere have been threats to implement \u2018gender fraud\u2019 laws [which make it a crime for official documents to show a gender other than the one recorded at birth]. They\u2019re changing voter ID regulations, requiring all IDs to match, which would prevent people like me from voting,\u201d Kreager says. \u201cThey\u2019re erasing information about trans people from government websites and encouraging dangerous behavior in society \u2014 citizens now feel empowered to act hatefully without being punished for it.”<\/p>\n

Kreager\u2019s passport and birth certificate don\u2019t reflect her name or gender: \u201cI started hearing stories of trans people with X markers [indicating that a person does not identify as male or female] on their documents \u2014 like me \u2014 who were getting their passports returned shredded when they tried to update them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

A rumor about the possible implementation of martial law, which began circulating on social media in April, led her to decide to leave the country, as the idea of living in a police state without proper documentation did not seem like a viable option.<\/p>\n

\"DonaldDonald Trump after signing an executive order banning trans women from participating in women’s sports.The Washington Post (The Washington Post via Getty Im)<\/p>\n

In fact, Kreager knew she wanted out \u201cas soon as Trump won his second term.\u201d During his election campaign, the Republican laid out a deeply anti-trans rhetoric: he pledged to roll back long-standing rights if elected, vowing, among other things, to punish doctors and hospitals that provide gender-affirming programs<\/a> and to ban trans women from competing in sporting events. Since taking office, and fulfilling his campaign promises, the U.S. president has signed 12 anti-trans executive orders, according to Trans Legislation Tracker, an independent research organization that tracks bills affecting trans people across the U.S.<\/p>\n

The Rainbow Railroad spokesperson\u2019s account is echoed by Canadian immigration law firms; many report receiving an influx of inquiries from American transgender people about moving to Canada. One such firm is Smith Immigration Law, whose founder, Adrienne Smith, notes that \u201cthere has been a significant uptick in the number of people urgently seeking to leave the U.S., whether through the refugee protection program, immigration programs, or spousal sponsorship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smith says that several of the people who have contacted her seeking representation describe different forms of persecution: \u201cLack of healthcare, the inability to have their official documents reflect their correct gender, officials who feel emboldened to deny them services\u2026 There are several types of abuse that the community is currently experiencing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UnionA group of people protested in New York after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a law banning certain medical care for transgender youth.Kylie Cooper (REUTERS)<\/p>\n

However, despite the evidence and Canada\u2019s history of welcoming LGBTQ+ refugees, many experts are skeptical that Americans\u2019 asylum claims will ultimately be accepted. From Rainbow Railroad, Chan clarifies that in addition to demonstrating that their experience in the U.S. falls under what is legally considered persecution, \u201capplicants must prove that their government is unable or unwilling to protect them, and that they cannot live safely anywhere in the country. This represents a particular challenge for American citizens, as the country has many of the typical indicators of a safe democratic state, which, furthermore, has historically been a place of welcome for LGBTQ+ refugees from around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although federal laws currently exist in the U.S. that target LGBTQ+ individuals, the issue, explains attorney Smith, is accepting that these laws have directly affected asylum seekers. \u201cThen there\u2019s the question of how these laws will be enforced in different states; whether there are governors who will actively disobey some of these federal laws,\u201d she clarifies. \u201cWe have to figure out how these executive orders will be enforced in places like California or New York.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is called \u201cinternal flight or relocation alternative,\u201d which, in the context of asylum law, refers to the possibility for a person seeking refuge from persecution to find a safe area within their own country, rather than being forced to migrate.<\/p>\n

A serious situation<\/p>\n

There are lawyers who believe the situation is \u201cserious enough\u201d to allow asylum claims to be successful in Canada, such as Calgary-based Yameena Ansari, who advises Hannah Kreager. A few months ago, she recommended she file an asylum application.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy client has an X marker in her passport, even though she\u2019s a woman. She had an appointment in February to change this on her passport, but she canceled it because she was afraid of losing the document. She didn\u2019t want that to happen to her because she needs a passport to leave the country.\u201d She adds: \u201cMy client would be in a country where the political climate is against her, where she can\u2019t even vote to change course, and where she can\u2019t leave because her documents could be revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since arriving, Kreager has been trying to start over in Calgary. She lives with a friend, and despite the worries of starting over in a new place and looking for work in a foreign country, she prefers this temporary instability to the \u201cdarkness and fear\u201d she was feeling back home: \u201cIt\u2019s really tough waking up and seeing the headline of the day read, \u2018You\u2019re banned.\u2019 It\u2019s like you don\u2019t exist.\u201d She\u2019s hopeful that her case will be successful: \u201cI hope it sets a precedent that allows other trans people to leave the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a> to get more English-language news coverage from EL PA\u00cdS USA Edition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIn the first 24 hours after Trump\u2019s re-election, we received 1,177 requests for assistance from the United States.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[20808,557,943,32,49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-295025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-arizona","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114923357104339746","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}