While in Florida, Michael lived in fear of Trump’s increasingly frightening anti-trans policies. The 20-year-old trans man, whose name has been changed to protect his identity, knew he needed to escape.
“Florida was always scary to be trans in. I did experience a lot of discrimination, anywhere from microaggressions to hearing someone I thought was a friend say that ‘all trans should be rounded up and killed,’” he told Ricochet.
“When Trump won the election, me and two friends realized we needed to get out. My parents were not supportive of this, but I just want to feel safe. So, I made sure I got to Canada before the inauguration.”
Michael arrived in Canada on a visitor visa without a clear plan hoping it would work, then managed to transition to a student visa. “A work permit was unrealistic for me. I couldn’t get the $20,000 needed to apply for a student visa. No banks would give me a loan without a co-signer.”
Much to his relief, he says, he convinced his parents to co-sign.
“Florida was always scary to be trans in… Someone I thought was a friend said that ‘all trans should be rounded up and killed.’”
After Trump’s inauguration, his parents started seeing for themselves how the persecution against trans people got increasingly worse. “They started believing me that he would hurt people.”
“Being out of Florida has been some of the best times of my life. I feel supported and have a sense of community here. I had friends who let me stay with them without having to pay rent until I could afford it while I got settled.”
Michael says he understands when people say they would rather no longer be alive than be forced back into the closet. “The ‘death before detransition’ slogan resonates with me because if I can’t live as myself, what’s the point of living?” he added.
“I have a few trans friends still in the U.S. who would like to come up [to Canada], though none have yet. I am trying to give them the best advice I can.”
A coming storm
The Trump administration is now poised for unprecedented persecution of trans people in the U.S. Many are now scrambling to find a way out, if they haven’t already left.
Rights that were hard fought for – and once taken for granted – are now being taken away or rolled back. Increasingly, discrimination is being embedded into laws and even mandated. While the current attacks on trans rights in the U.S. are largely aimed at youth, adults too are looking to escape.
Ricochet exchanged messages with a U.S./Canada clandestine trans immigration network working to find underground pathways for trans people to escape — in addition to a Canadian trans rights advocate, an organization that helps relocate LGBTQ+ people to safety through legal pathways, as well as politicians and lawyers working to welcome trans asylum-seekers into Canada.
But not everyone is permitted or has the means to immigrate to Canada through legal pathways, forcing some to choose the illegal route, mainly because claiming asylum from the United States is highly unlikely to be recognized by Canada as a result of the Safe Third Country Agreement.
Jenny Kwan, NDP MP for Vancouver East and Critic for Housing, Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship, explained what’s at stake, how this developing crisis evolved, and ways the Canadian government could respond.
“The Safe Third Country Agreement bars those in the U.S. from seeking asylum in Canada, and the government should get rid of it,” Kwan told Ricochet.
Ricochet put together a portrait of the dire situation for trans people in the U.S. to better understand the big picture through the lens of trans people and their allies.
There have been numerous reported cases detailing trans individuals in the U.S. trying to seek asylum who are particularly at risk, however not everyone has opportunities like Michael, who would not have made it without his parents co-signing a loan.
Advocates are now calling on the Canadian government to remove the U.S. from the STC to allow for trans people to escape the U.S. to Canada.
Fae Johnstone, a Canadian trans rights advocate and executive director of Queer Momentum, would like to see the Canadian government make it easier for trans people to immigrate through legal pathways, with support responding to the challenges resulting from Trump’s anti-trans crusade.
“The Canadian government should be prepared in the event of an escalation of anti-trans repression. I would like to see the government set up a crisis plan that takes into account all possible outcomes,” she said, mindful that things are very likely to get worse.
El-Farouk Khaki, an immigration and refugee lawyer based in Toronto, suggests that it might be possible to successfully argue an asylum claim in Canada for trans people coming from the U.S., because the persecution of trans people is happening at the federal level. However, there is no precedent for it yet, to his knowledge. “Nowhere in the paperwork does it say that Americans are barred from making an asylum claim in Canada, but it’s not clear if it would be successful,” he said.
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada declined to comment, citing its commitment to independence and impartiality.
“The Canadian government should be prepared in the event of an escalation of anti-trans repression.”
Timothy Chan is director of communications at Rainbow Railroad, an international organization based in Toronto and New York City that helps at-risk LGBTQI+ people who face violence and persecution around the world escape to safety. They say that for any U.S. citizen trying to seek asylum abroad, it is important to note that the international legal framework for refugee protection (grounded in the 1951 Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees) is inherently restrictive and applies a high legal burden on the asylum-seeker.
“In addition to showing that their experiences in the U.S. rises to the level of persecution, as defined within the law, asylum seekers must demonstrate that their government is either unable or unwilling to protect them, and that they are unable to live safely in any part of the United States,” Chan explains.
The Canada government website states “the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) permits the designation of safe third countries for the purpose of sharing the responsibility for refugee claims. Only countries that respect human rights and offer a high degree of protection to asylum seekers may be designated as safe third countries. To date, the United States is the only designated safe third country.”
Under the Agreement, American refugee claimants seeking entry to Canada are to be sent back to the U.S., with only certain exceptional cases to be considered. Many are detained by ICE after they are sent back.
Why trans people don’t feel safe: A brutal portrait
Chan told Ricochet that Rainbow Railroad has seen a massive increase in requests coming from trans people in the U.S.
“Within the first 24 hours of Trump’s re-election, we received 1,177 requests for help (RFH) from the United States. Up until that point, we had received 700 RFH from the U.S. in the entire year,” they said. “In less than one day, we received more than what we’ve received since January 2024. This is the most RFHs we’ve ever received from a country in one day.”
To put it into perspective, Chan said that at the peak of the Afghanistan crisis (in August 2021), the highest daily number of requests for help the organization received was 119. “In 2025 so far, we’ve received 3,035 requests from individuals living in the United States. This is a 1063 per cent increase compared to the same time last year.
“The average age of someone requesting help from the USA this year is 32 years old, while 38 per cent are trans women and 16 per cent are trans men.”
This data lines up with a reported spike in distress in LGBTQ+ youth within the U.S. following Trump’s inauguration. The Trump administration is considering removing the 988 Suicide Prevention and Crisis Lifeline’s specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth, a move that experts say would cost lives.
During the campaign, Trump denied claims he would implement Project 2025, however a Project 2025 tracker suggests otherwise, with nearly half of it coming to fruition already. The project aims to turn the U.S. into a state based on Christian fundamentalism in which discrimination of trans people is enshrined in law, according to the ACLU.
Trump and his team are also putting pressure on foreign governments to repeal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, as well as LGBTQ+ protection laws, as part of his trade war strategy.
Thousands of anti-LGBTQ bills have been passed in districts across the country in recent years, with many of them targeting transgender Americans in schools, on sports teams, and in public spaces, such as bathrooms.
“In less than one day, we received more than what we’ve received since January 2024. This is the most requests for help we’ve ever received from a country in one day.”
During his first term as president, Trump opened the floodgates to allow for discrimination against sexual and gender minorities by imposing more anti-LGBTQ+ policies than any previous administration, particularly in health and social services.
It has become clear to trans Americans like Michael that their safety is increasingly under threat with each passing day, and one of the most vile chapters of human history may be repeating itself. However, asylum claims are not determined on whether things could get worse in the future, but on immediate threats.
The country is increasingly taking the shape of a secret-police state, posits Masha Gessen, a Russian-American dissident trans and non-binary journalist, in their column for the New York Times last month. This is advanced in particular because of secret lists of people whose political beliefs don’t align with Trump’s – notably on Gaza – the authorization for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to essentially abduct and disappear people without due process, as well as the expansion of population surveillance including efforts to encourage people to snitch on one another.
Additionally, many observers find the Trump regime reminiscent of the rise of Nazi Germany, where transgender and homosexual people were removed from public life. Most underwent forced detransitioning, imprisonment, and death in concentration camps. The Nazis also burned the pioneering books and research at the Institute of Sexual Research in May 1933 — 25,000 of the institute’s books, many of which were some of the earliest writings on transgender history and medicine.
During the presidential campaign, a GOP candidate staged a book burning of LGBTQ+ books.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services by President Trump, suggests sending mentally ill people to “wellness camps,” all while his office considers being transgender a mental illness, he calls gender affirming care “child abuse,” and dehumanizes autistic people – as the Nazi eugenicists infamously did – further, it’s worth noting, that trans people are overrepresented on the autism spectrum.
In the same direction, the Trump administration is quickly wiping data and erasing all sorts of information about trans people, defunding research concerning gender care, and is attempting to rewrite history without trans people in it, all in the name of protecting children from “transgender lunacy.”
None of this is new
A sharp rise in violent anti-trans political rhetoric in recent years has led to widespread persecution of trans Americans, including multiple clinics facing bomb threats across the U.S., often motivated by misinformation and disinformation, purporting that they are “surgically and chemically mutilating” young children. It’s worth noting that bottom surgeries are only very rarely performed on under 18s, per the WPATH standards of care.
Some states have enacted bathroom bans, leading to people being policed and harassed, including cisgender people. More extreme bills have been proposed, such as to define identifying as transgender “gender fraud,” a felony punishable by jail, or to define transgender people as pornographic and obscene, as well as slashing funding for LGBTQ+ program, banning trans girls from sports, limiting funding for schools that promote “gender ideology indoctrination” (sex and gender education), removing protections for imprisoned trans people, all in an attempt to exclude them from public life.
Drag bans and the “groomer” moral panic are also attempts to erase LGBTQ+ people from public life and make people believe that there is a threat to children. The Southern Poverty Law Center argues that anti-trans rhetoric is used to ramp up fear and drive gun sales.
Much like the genocidal rhetoric Michael witnessed in Florida, one GOP candidate went so far as to call for the execution by firing squad of trans rights supporters in 2022, another GOP governor endorsed by Trump compared LGBTQ+ people to vermin and filth and a CPAC speaker called for the “eradication of transgenderism” in 2024 — all without receiving much, if any, backlash from fellow GOP members and supporters.
Earlier this month, Trump ordered the removal of transgender service members from the U.S. military. While many trans individuals choose to join the army because acceptance in society is often limited, and since being trans can often be unaffordable, the socioeconomic perks of being in the military can allow individuals to cross the barriers to live as themselves.
There have been reports of trans people taking their lives, including a trans veteran, fearing the worst from the Trump regime, while other trans people have tried crowdfunding to relocate to safer states.
Some trans people have had passports confiscated
On January 20, shortly after the inauguration, President Trump signed an executive order (archived here) “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” The policy took aim at enforcing biological sex at birth on passports. It has left trans travellers stranded, with some being detained and having their passports seized. Its legal basis is now being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, separately. That policy is blocked for now.
As a result, some trans individuals have posted on social media to say they never received their travel documents back, seized under the policy, or that they were destroyed. There have also been various reports of illegal handling of those documents by officials, as well as a trans person who had their driver’s license revoked for their appearance not matching their gender marker. As such, trans people seeking sanctuary within Canada may not be able to provide necessary identification documents, and they may not even be allowed to cross the border.
“So it seems I will not be able to travel outside the country, which is effectively on the same playing field as North Korea,” said a trans woman on TikTok whose passport was confiscated by the passport office and refused any passport. “I only left the office under threat of arrest.”
On January 28, Trump signed another executive order (archived here) “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” aimed at ending access to gender-affirming care for children, a focal point of his second presidential campaign, during which he spent $215 million on anti-trans TV ads alone. This order is currently blocked in some states.
Some parts of the U.S. are less safe than others for trans people, which is an important determining factor to assess asylum claims: if the asylum-seekers can prove that there is nowhere to be safe in their home country, they are much more likely to have a positive outcome.
The murder rate for trans people doubled between 2017 and 2022 – much of this period under Trump – with Black and latina trans women facing the most risk out of any demographic, though it showed signs of declining under Biden.
The majority of trans murder victims in the U.S. are killed with a gun, with 7 in 10 trans homicides being Black trans women, and the perpetrators are twice more likely to be a family member or intimate partner than gun homicide victims in general, according to a 2024 study by Every Town Research, a U.S. group that tracks trans homicides.
Following this logic, trans migrants and asylum seekers in the U.S. are at greater risk of being snitched on to ICE for deportation – as was the case during Trump’s first term – and is often a form of death sentence.
Tarlis Marcone De Barros Goncalves, a documented immigrant trans woman from Brazil, is currently being illegally detained in Guantanamo Bay, a prison originally meant to detain those deemed “terrorists” or “threats to the state.” Such cases are common for trans immigrants, the journalist who reported on her situation wrote.
“Horrifically, this abuse is indeed common to both trans prisoners and immigrants. There are countless horror stories from ICE facilities of trans immigrants being deprived of essential medical care, with one investigation finding that at least one trans woman has died in ICE custody. Others were berated and insulted by guards, and many immigrants have been outright tortured by ICE personnel.”
Every Town Research writes that every year, without exception, more than two dozen trans people are killed. “The connection between legislative hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community and risks of violence faced by transgender individuals is clear and deeply troubling.”
There are 69 hate crimes involving firearms per day in the U.S., with trans people more likely to be the victims of violent crimes. And one-third of all murderers of trans people should never have had access to guns in the first place, because they were legally prohibited from possessing a firearm.
Under a police state, Gessen also wrote, “People lose the ability to plan for the future, because they feel that they have no control over their lives, and they try to make themselves invisible.”
In that sense, some trans people may be forced back into the closet for survival, though that is not possible for all trans people. The loss of ability to plan for the future could certainly plague trans people’s minds, too. For some, the only way to break the cycle of fear and despair is to flee.
All the hostility listed above has led to a significant rise of the trans resistance slogan “Death Before Detransition,” in response to Republicans wanting a country without trans people, with some observers likening the situation to a genocide.
Many trans people fear being forcibly detransitioned or killed — and some would rather fight to the death for their bodily autonomy rather than be detransitioned forcibly by the state.
As it was predicted by many that it would not only limit access to care from children, the Trump administration got rid of transition care coverage under medicaid for all ages on the night of May 21.
The health care providers of trans people may also seek a way out of the country.
While all this is happening, some Democrats still consider Kamala Harris’ support of trans people the reason they lost the election.
Seeking safety in Canada — legally and illegally
At Rainbow Railroad, Chan emphasizes that “seeking asylum is likely to be challenging for U.S. citizens,” given that the U.S. has many of the typical markers of a “safe,” democratic state, and historically, the U.S. has been a country offering protection for LGBTQ+ refugees from around the world.
As such, they say, “U.S. citizens usually do not meet the international legal definition of a refugee. Although refugee systems vary by country, and cases are determined based on a personalized assessment of circumstances, U.S. citizens seeking asylum abroad should anticipate encountering challenges.
“Due to the constraints of the international legal framework, Rainbow Railroad is currently unable to provide resettlement services for individuals in the U.S.” Chan added.
The decision to leave everything behind and come to Canada illegally is monumental. Even if those individuals succeed, hardship awaits. Health care access is expensive, dangerous and limited without insurance.
“Canada’s role is to protect people, and LGBTQ+ people are not safe in the U.S. It’s disturbing that there are LGBTQ+ refugees in the U.S. who now have nowhere to go.”
Despite the risks, new underground pathways are now being created for trans people.
A source who did not want her identity revealed for her safety says she is part of a clandestine network working to facilitate illegal crossings of the U.S.-Canada border for trans people.
She explains that, because most don’t have money to go through the legal pathways – being a socioeconomically marginalized demographic and since refugee status for trans U.S. citizens is not recognized by Canada – it means those seeking sanctuary in Canada sometimes have to pretend to be travelling for vacations and leave almost everything behind, so as not to raise suspicions if they brought too many things with them.
Often these trans people have to “go stealth,” or pretend to be their assigned gender at birth to avoid detection.
“Many have not yet made their move,” she says, “but they are planning their exit in case things get worse, or for Canada to signal it is willing to let them in.”
Even if they succeed in making it to Canada illegally, accessing health care may be challenging. If they are undocumented, they will have to turn to the grey market to continue accessing the hormones that align with their gender, or ask fellow trans people to share their prescriptions with them.
Already struggling trans support organizations will likely have to bear the added weight of supporting those individuals with the limited resources they have.
If they get caught and their asylum claim does not receive recognition, the fate that awaits is likely a forced return home or ICE detention and they could be barred from returning to Canada. If they are not U.S. citizens, they could even get deported, often to their deaths. If they don’t die while in ICE detention, as it happened to some, such as Roxsana Hernandez, a Honduran trans woman asylum-seeker.
Because the U.S. government has been seizing IDs and passports for those whose gender markers do not match their presumed assigned sex at birth, and detaining trans people at the border, it could be impossible for some to travel at all, even through domestic flights.
There are reports of a 7 to 12 year wait between the moment asylum is requested and permanent residency is granted in Quebec, a common destination of choice because Montreal is largely regarded as the go-to sanctuary city for trans people.
Lena Metlege Diab, the new Immigration minister under Prime Minister Mark Carney, did not respond to Ricochet’s request for comment.
The NDP’s Jenny Kwan says it’s clear from Trump’s actions that the U.S. is no longer safe for asylum seekers.
“There are many asylum-seekers who came to the U.S. who are LGBTQ+. Trans people are being stripped of their rights and are at risk of becoming stateless,” she told Ricochet.
Kwan says the Safe Third Country Agreement heightens the risk of human trafficking for marginalized people. The new minority government has not yet addressed the issue.
“Canada needs to examine the immigration system’s structural issues, which has a lot of internal biases,” she says. “Canada’s role is to protect people, and LGBTQ+ people are not safe in the U.S. It’s disturbing that there are LGBTQ+ refugees in the U.S. who now have nowhere to go.”
Trans advocate Fae Johnstone has been calling for travel advisories since Trump’s inauguration. She has a different perspective on this.
“I recognize the struggles of trans people living in the U.S., but I think that, in terms of asylum seeking, we should focus on other countries where needs are more pressing for now. Solutions other than asylum need to be explored. We should try and develop better relations with the U.S., rather than giving them the middle finger,” she says.
She explains that, in the U.S., there are states that are more or less safe, and that it’s possible for trans people to seek better safety there. Meanwhile, there are countries, such as Sudan, Uganda, Jamaica, and Russia, where seeking safety is virtually impossible.
In Johnstone’s view, the government should consider alleviating financial pressure for trans people in the U.S. to support more legal pathways, including accommodating for the passport/ID crackdown.
Refugee lawyer El-Farouk Khaki says he has represented asylum-seekers from the U.S. He says he’s worked on cases in which Americans faced persecution that was as extreme as countries with notorious anti-LGBTQ hate laws.
“However, solely on the basis that they are from the U.S., they didn’t get approved,” he said.
Since this is the U.S. federal government persecuting trans people, “it might be possible to argue certain claims for trans people, though I have not heard of that having worked for anybody, because the U.S. still has a generally good reputation, is considered safe and our greatest ally.”
Khaki says gender-affirming care should be easily accessible for people in the asylum seeking process. “Once you are in Canada, certain access to trans health care would be possible under the refugee program. It takes one month for an interview, then the waiting time for the refugee board takes two years. However, they could expedite the cases for Americans, although it might be just to deny them.”
Khaki says there are ways to make an asylum claim work without a passport, through other identification documents, but getting into the country without a passport may prove challenging.
With legal aid, he said, the process costs nothing to the asylum seeker. But without legal aid, the cost of going through the asylum process is in the $5,000 to $10,000 range.
“If someone were to be refused their asylum claim and sent home, it is possible to get a ministerial permit to re-enter the country later,” he added.
Khaki believes that children might stand a better chance of arguing their case if Trump’s policy to end the access to their necessary gender-affirming care was found to be constitutional in U.S. courts, meaning that they wouldn’t be able to access that care in any part of the country.
Khaki says he is willing to make the cases of trans people arriving from the U.S. heard before the Refugee Board of Canada.
Trans Rescue, an organization that helps trans people escape deadly situations, published a post explaining how asylum claims are made, and notes that “someone seeking asylum needs to show they are in real, immediate, deadly danger. Discrimination and humiliation in the U.S. and UK don’t qualify.”
This month in Quebec, eight groups that support trans people signed a letter calling for the Safe Third Country Act to be scrapped and to welcome trans asylum seekers.
Canada, a trans sanctuary. Really?
With the repeated annexationist threats and its own rise in anti-trans discourse, despite Carney being in favor of trans rights, Canada’s reputation as a sanctuary country for trans people is increasingly being diminished.
Many are now worried that if the government sits back and idly waits for things to get significantly worse before taking action, it will already be too late to save many of the most vulnerable.
Kwan said the anti-trans rhetoric from Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre has been emboldening hate across the country, and that Canada is failing its legal and moral obligation under the 1951 Refugee Convention.
She would like to see Carney stand up to Trump on trans rights. “So long as Canada turns a blind eye to what’s going on in the U.S., it is not a true ally to LGBTQ+ people, which is what Carney got elected to be.
“Carney hasn’t commented on it so far, and he did not bring it up when he met Trump,” Kwan said.
Johnstone says the political situation could change anywhere at any time, even in Canada, and that trans rights should not be taken for granted. There is no place in the world that can guarantee trans people’s safety forever, not even under Carney.
