The transgender refugees fleeing the US

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, we meet the Americans fleeing Trump and claiming asylum in Europe.

0:21Quick warning before we start, this episode contains some homophobic slurs and some discussion of suicide.

0:31Just before Christmas, I went on a trip to the Netherlands, along with Today in Focus producer Eli Block. OK, so we've driven about two and a half hours out of Amsterdam. We're almost at the German border. It's a nice, clear winter's day. Teppel is not a place you'd usually visit as a tourist. There are no quaint old boon mills, and we're far too late for tulip season. There are wind turbines, though, and canals and dikes and lots of people valiantly cycling into a fierce headwind. We park up by a busy dual carriageway and walk over towards a big complex of buildings surrounded by wire fences.

1:09There are lots of young men hanging around, women on bicycles with headscarves. Hello, hi. How are you? Yeah, good, thank you. In Dutch society, Tear Apple is known for one thing. It's an enormous refugee camp, which is rarely out of the news. It's home to 2 ,000 people living mostly in shared accommodation and occasionally outside in tents when it gets too full. There are people from all around the world in this camp. These are people from Syria, from Afghanistan, from Eritrea, from Sudan. And this young man, Osama, who is 21 years old. Hello. Hi. Hi. So we're journalists from The Guardian, from the UK.

1:52From the UK. From the UK, yeah. I want to go to the UK. Oh, do you? Where are you from? I'm from Algeria. Oh, right, OK. And are you living here in Terrapol? Yeah, I live here in Terrapol. What's it like? So it's not good for me. I'm half Algerian, half Libyan, you know. Right. They tell me that I must go back to Libya. No, no, no. In Libya, you know, the situation is not good. In 2010, they killed my father. I was so young, you know. So my life is sorry. It's fucked up. In many ways, Osama's story was pretty typical of the people living in the camp. But I wasn't there to meet him. I was there to meet the newest cohort of refugee hopefuls, waiting for their claims to be processed.

2:40I ask if he's seen any Americans inside the camp. He looks at me as if I'm mad. Why they come here? My dream is to go to America or UK. America for me is the paradise. They have all in America. You can work, you can make a million if you have a good idea why they come here. Like me, my country, I have war in my country. It was a good question. Why would someone leave the U.S. to live in a miserable refugee camp 5 ,000 miles away from home?

3:16This is the dumbest thing I've ever done. and I did it because I was afraid for my life that I didn't have a choice. Like, I didn't do this in secret. I talked to everybody I knew. I said, I'm planning to do this wildly stupid thing. And everybody said, I don't love this for you, but there is no other option. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus. Transgender refugees in the age of Trump.

3:48This story began for me at the very end of November last year, when I received an email out of the blue from a woman called Jane. Hi there, it began. I was looking for statistics and other information about Americans who've received asylum in the Netherlands and came across a story you'd written. This story that Jane was referring to was a news report I wrote almost exactly 16 years ago about Americans trying and failing to claim asylum abroad. I barely remembered writing it, but what Jane wrote next piqued my interest. I figured I'd email you in case you were not aware of what's going on in the Netherlands, she wrote.

4:24I'm one of, I want to say, 35 to 50 American refugees here in the Netherlands, most of whom are trans women. A few weeks later, I'm meeting Jane at her Apple where she's been living since April. Yeah, I'm James Shellark. I am a former software engineer and current refugee in the Netherlands. And how does that feel to say that you're a refugee? Surreal. I come from the U.S. where we have a lot of conversation in the culture about refugees and immigration. And as a trans person, I feel pretty strange being at the intersection of all of these contentious political subjects back home. Jane is 47 years old.

5:07She's tall with curly hair and is wearing maroon cat-eye glasses. Back in the States, she led many lives. She worked for the U.S. military, designing cyber weapons. She trained as a priest, and she worked for Uber as a software engineer. She begins by telling me that she started to think about fleeing the U.S. after Trump returned to the White House last January. The first day in office, he started making executive orders about trans people. And I was aware that my passport was no longer going to be valid. My passport was expiring in the beginning of 2026, which meant that I couldn't travel on it.

5:42I couldn't renew it. I knew that if I asked for another one, I would get a passport with the wrong gender marker. And this may be uncomfortable, but I started thinking, well, what would it take to move somewhere else? I wasn't thinking specifically about fleeing the country and asking for asylum. Trump won the 2024 election with adverts attacking trans and non-binary people. Kamala is for they, them. President Trump is for you. I'm Donald J. Trump and I approve this message. And in his very first speech after the inauguration, he made it clear that he didn't believe in gender identity. As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.

6:30On day one, he signed an executive order which erased federal recognition of transgender identities. This meant that trans people like Jane lost anti-discrimination protections in their employment, in housing and in health care. And it meant that if she reapplied for a passport, it would say that she was a man, despite her living as a woman since well before Trump's first term. Well, transition is not like a day on the calendar. I came out in December of 2012. I had all of my ID changed to female by August of the following year. And I had bottom surgery in 2014. So this is, for me, all in the past.

7:08And I feel that I did everything they asked me to. I followed their instructions. I got all the doctors to sign off. I had the State Department and the DMV and everybody was cool with it. And then they want to retroactively undo this. And that wounds me. If things were bad for trans people during Trump 1, They were really bad right from the start of Trump too. During this period, the level of hostility that I experienced went up dramatically, similar to how it had after the 2016 election. I was in San Francisco. I was supposed to be in the safest place in the country. There probably wasn't anywhere else I could go that would be more progressive and accommodating of my identity and that here I was and things were getting worse to the point that I was scared for my life.

7:54and then someone threatened to murder me.

8:01For several years, I had not left my apartment unless I had a taxi waiting. I made sure that there was always an Uber or a Waymo in front of my apartment because I had encountered a lot of people being really hostile to me just in front of my home. And one day, I was going to the store across the street and there was a woman in the driver's seat of a running car and had to walk between her truck and another car in front of her. And she screams at me, I'm going to kill you, you fucking faggot. And my initial response was, I thought it was funny. I thought, wait, if you're going to use a slur, like you use the right slur, like that's not even accurate.

8:48I'm not a faggot, like you have this wrong. and that's when it goes from like, ha ha, funny, that's absurd. What do you, oh my God, like she means this. Jane raced across traffic and darted into a shop for safety. I've had people tell me they were going to kill me before. I've had people tell me that they hate me before. I've had people slur and just be generally disagreeable. But that was the first time that I was faced with someone who said they were going to do it with the means to do it in the moment that they felt it. and that it's kind of a life-changing experience when that happens. According to the Transgender Law Center, the homicide rate of trans victims doubled under Trump's first term and now the U.S.

9:32ranks third in the world for trans people who were violently killed after Brazil and Mexico. Jane says she's had bad experiences with the police in the past and so never reported it. But the incident crystallized a feeling that had been brewing. She had to get out. I spoke to my friends at the time and my therapist, and to my surprise, she said, why are you still here? And that's, I mean, I think that's the person at that point that I trusted most in the whole world. And I knew that I really needed to make a change and not just like think, well, maybe next year or maybe the end of this year that I needed to leave before I was seriously harmed or killed.

10:13She left everything behind, including her boyfriend. I am in love with the handsomest, smartest man. And I left him. He's back there. And gosh, it's gut-wrenching. I said, I'm really sorry because I want to be here with you. This means so much to me. But I have to do something to make sure that I am alive. And I can't guarantee that right now. I can't have a relationship with you if I'm dead.

10:48And some people might think, you know, you've got an American passport, you're from San Francisco, you're a software engineer. Surely the world is your oyster. You could just get a working visa. Why didn't you do that? So, yeah, yeah, in theory, there are a couple of reasons for this. So I left at the end of April. So this was, let's call it six or eight weeks before I actually flew. Let's say that on March 7th that I said, well, today I'm going to go and get a job in Europe somewhere. The time it would take from when I sent that email to apply for a job to getting a response to scheduling an interview to having them, you know, as an engineer, I would have probably five or six interviews.

11:35And then waiting for them to talk to HR and the hiring manager and all of that stuff can take months. And I felt that months was not really a good plan. There were lots of ways I could have done it two years ago, even a year before I left. But things changed very rapidly and I didn't have an opportunity to. Believe me, I would prefer to be here working as a software engineer rather than destitute into Apple. Yeah. And why did you choose the Netherlands? So the Netherlands is one of the only countries that has given asylum to people based on specifically their identity as a trans woman and their persecution because of that.

12:16Actually, the first place that I thought about going was Thailand, because I had gone to Thailand for surgery right after I came out. And I thought, well, I love Thailand and the people that were really nice to me and they have a pretty positive attitude towards trans women. but Thailand is not a signatory to the Convention on Refugees. So you cannot go to Thailand and say, hey, can we talk about asylum? So then you start narrowing this down to primarily EU countries. She thought about the UK, but this was around the time of the Supreme Court judgment, which ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex, potentially barring trans women from single-sex services and spaces.

12:55So the Netherlands it was. Around this time, I started learning some Dutch. and when I told my friends, they were excited, and they said, oh, it's great there, you're going to love the Netherlands. And I said, I've never been there, all I know is windmills and canals and tulips, I don't know anything about the Netherlands. And so I came here sort of sight unseen, and knew nothing about the place, and, you know, I got off the airplane, I was terrified the whole time, and I got to customs, and I was just crying, and I said, who do I talk to about asylum? and they kind of laughed because what's this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum?

13:33And then they realized I was serious and that was like my introduction to the country.

13:45And then what was it like entering a refugee camp? Had you ever been in one in your life before? No, no, it was... So the Dutch were not thrilled that I was there. They seemed to be a little surprised. And then I'm surrounded by people from primarily North Africa that are looking at me like, what is this American doing here? Because I can't hide the fact that I'm American. And so there's a general hostility from everybody that was there. And then on top of that, I don't know what the rules are. I don't know how to behave in this place. The intake process was scary and difficult. And then they finally get me to my room, which they have us in these two square meter rooms and it's cold.

14:33There's graffiti all over the walls in Arabic. and then random what I assume is like bodily fluids on the wall, just really gross stuff. And I realized, OK, here I am. I'm in this camp. This is my home until whenever this gets resolved. And I did not sleep that night because I was so anxious. And by the time I finally got to sleep, I had been awake for five days. Before long, Jane moved to what she calls the queer block at Terrapel. This is where all the LGBT asylum seekers live while they wait to be granted refugee status. And you said that you were sort of surrounded by people from African countries, maybe Middle Eastern countries, presumably some or many of whom might have fled war.

15:19There might be gay men there who come from countries in Africa where they could be executed for being gay. Did you sort of compare your situation to theirs? Yeah, so when you're an American and you're in a place like Tarapul, you have to be gentle about that. Because, I mean, I told you earlier that I never left my apartment if I didn't have a Waymo or an Uber sitting in front. If you live in Libya, that has to sound like some kind of alien BS. Like, who has a robot taxi waiting for them? And so I didn't just sit down and say, hey, tell me about your life and let's compare our stories. but over you know weeks and months of hanging out with people from these places your stories emerge and you talk about it when people are comfortable sharing and it's usually you know over dinner or like you have cigarettes and breakfast and you know in those moments where everybody's kind of guard is down and they're not worried about what these people think of me and you're just kind of sharing because you're here for all day every day for months that's when they talking about what happened to them.

16:28And everybody kind of wants to know why these Americans are here, because I'm not the only one. And they want to know, like, what the hell is an American doing here? And we talked at length. And it was kind of sad and kind of validating that our stories are very similar, that we had an equal fear of police for the same reasons we had a fear of the government. We felt that we couldn't ask the government for help. And if we did, that we would be in more danger. We were in danger from the people around us. And in fact, all of us thought of America as a place we wanted to live in a beautiful country of opportunities.

17:03And, and, and like, that's all still true. But it was surprising and again, sad and validating that the people there, you know, a trans dude from Tehran and a trans woman from Libya, our stories were so similar. And I, I don't know how to explain that because you can imagine I hear a lot of people saying, you are an idiot. You are an idiot. You came here from America. Like you, people will tell me, did you think about moving to California? And then I say, well, I lived in San Francisco. And then they go, oh, that's such a heaven for gay people. And like, but it's different for trans people, particularly for trans women, to the extent that my experience in San Francisco, robot taxis aside, was indistinguishable from the people that I knew from Libya and Iran and Morocco and Algeria and so forth.

18:00Hi, I'm so pleased to meet you. How are you? Good timing. I had to move away from the gate because there were men harassing me. Oh, really? As usual. Oh, dear. Yeah. What were they saying to you? I have no idea. It was in Arabic. This is Lisa. She's from Montana in the American West. and she fled to the Netherlands last year with her 14-year-old teenager, Knox. They're far from the only family in Tirappel, but the majority of asylum seekers there are men from Africa or the Middle East, and Lisa finds them intimidating. So I carry a rock in my pocket so that I can put it in the palm of my hand if I ever have to punch one of these men in the face to get them to leave me in Knox alone.

18:42I've been doing that for months. Have you ever used it? Have you ever had to throw it? I have not, thankfully, had to use it. Lisa and Knox have lived in Terrapil since April last year, and she misses their life back home. When I picture my life then, it was a sunny winter day. I had a fabulous apartment with a balcony that overlooked the Clark Fork River. And on the other side of the Clark Fork River was Mount Sentinel rising up. huge, beautiful stone mountain right outside my back door. We had friends. We were active in society. I went to synagogue on a weekly basis, and we had things to do.

19:30We had museums to go to, ice skating for Knox. Knox was in ballet and gymnastics at one point. We had people that loved us, and that... We had people that loved us and that we loved around us on a regular basis. It's obviously upsetting for you to think back to those times. Do you think about it a lot when you're in the refugee camp, what you left behind? No, I'm trying to look forward rather than backwards quite so much. Yeah. Knox is Lisa's biological grandchild, but she adopted them when they were little. Knox originally wanted to transition female to male when they were 11 years old. And we were in Montana.

20:19And I said, you know, I just don't think it's a good idea right now. Even though Biden was president, there was still so much hatred towards transgender people. I wanted Knox to wait. And so Knox decided to go non-binary. Knox is now more comfortable and feeling a little more safe about transitioning now that we are here in the Netherlands. And just within the last six weeks, Knox has brought up transitioning female to male again rather than being non-binary. And let's go back to the moment that you decided you had to leave the US. Well, it was a series of moments rather than just one particular moment.

21:06One of the most significant was the Hail Hitler. Oh, Elon Musk. Yes, the Elon Musk hand signal, Nazi hand signal. And I was watching that and I thought, this is really not good. And Knox has brown skin. Knox has a black man, birth father, and Knox's mother, my daughter, is white. So white supremacy is not a good thing for my family. And I am Jewish, so all my alarm bells were going off from the time Trump was elected until we left April 19th. You've not mentioned particular hostility towards transgender people. Was that also feeding into? Oh, yes. And that's actually been a given for quite a few years.

21:58So that's why I don't mention it. It had reached a level of normalcy, not only in Montana but all over the U.S. But NUX was harassed and bullied at school because of their transgender identity issues and because of their brown skin. And so I don't mention it only because it had just become so normal. And what research did you do before you came to the Netherlands to claim asylum? a panicked research on my cell phone mostly, trying to save all the pages that I could, trying to make copious notes, and then being afraid that I'd get caught with all of that at the same time. So because my anxiety was so high, I feel like my thinking was very scattered and the research that I was doing was not consistent like it would be now.

22:58so I was in a panicked we must go we must go mindset. But it must have been a huge decision for you as a parent to take your child to another continent. Yeah a completely different culture and Knox is at an age where these sorts of big changes you know altered the course of their lives so yeah. And how confident were you that you would be successful claiming asylum? Not very confident at all. But you thought it was still worth a go? Yes. Right. I thought it was worth the chance for safety. I knew I needed to do whatever it took to get Knox to safety. And they have brown skin. And ICE grabs first and asks questions later.

23:51And since we have left the U.S., I am more convinced that it was the right decision. But at the time, I was not. I was just so afraid. Everything was such a blur. I was so afraid. I was afraid of getting grabbed by my own government, even though I was in another country. And so the fear was just, I would say, irrational. but after seeing the things that happened in the US since then, I think it was mostly premonition. Americans don't need a visa to come to the EU, so Lisa and Knox were able to just fly to Amsterdam, but they didn't claim asylum at the airport like Jane did. So we stayed in a hotel north of Terra Apple for two days and we really relaxed and enjoyed ourselves and we walked around on some beautiful gardens and ate good food and laughed and just, I think, really started to relax.

24:54And I told Knox, the next part is going to be the hard part. And so I called a cab to go from the hotel to the asylum reception center in Terrapel. and when we pulled up in the cab the woman driver looked at me and she asked are you sure about this and it was just such a scary looking place and I said no no I'm not but I guess we're gonna do it anyway and Knox was telling me I don't like the look of this place I don't like the way this place looks and you know there are fences all around and there are guards and there's locked gates And that's really intimidating. We arrived with two suitcases and two backpacks.

25:40And we got out of the cab and just walked right into the asylum reception area and told them we are here to apply for asylum. And I was shaking like a leaf.

26:00Last year, 76 Americans claimed asylum in the Netherlands. up from nine in 2024. Anecdotally, dozens of them seem to be trans. The Dutch Immigration Ministry doesn't collect data on why they fled the US. And I think there's at least 2 ,000 people living in Tirappel from countries all around the world. How did people from other countries greet the Americans? There's a lot of surprise and a lot of incredulity, like a lot of asking, why are you here? And one word and I get eye rolls, I say Trump and they go, oh, yeah. So I think just saying Trump is enough to get a look at recognition from people.