As I return home from a trip to Canada, I walk through the twists and turns of Toronto’s Pearson Airport, following the signs with American flags pointing me in the direction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Canadian airport staff check my passport multiple times, but as I get closer to the U.S. clearance area, I feel the stakes rising. The U.S. border protection agent motions me to approach the counter and present my U.S. passport. He mumbles; doesn’t smile. I wonder what he sees on his computer screen, what databases his system pulls from, and how the camera in front of me feeds into those technologies. I am privileged because the “M” printed on my passport matches the stubble that grows on my face and the rest of my appearance. Yet the computer and database system may reveal a different history—the “F” that used to be printed there.
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Ever since a January 20th presidential executive order mandated that there are only “two sexes, male and female,” which are “not changeable,” American trans people have been stuck in a spiral of fear and uncertainty. The specific consequences vary, depending, in part, on the status of their identification documents. For me—a U.S. citizen, a white person, someone who is usually read as our society’s default (white male)—the effects are less severe. I spend a lot of time and energy reassuring and comforting my mentees, many of whom are trans people of color, people with nonbinary genders now erased by the new mandate, immigrants—or all three. In online trans communities, I read about people’s fears—people with an X marker on their passport or driver’s license, people who were born intersex and don’t fit neatly into Trump’s binary gender boxes, and those who dread mailing in their passport for renewal, fearing their new passport’s gender marker will revert back to their birth sex. Those in the U.S. fear crossing the border, and worry that they won’t be let back in. Those who live outside of the country hesitate to visit but may have no choice—whether for work, family, or necessity. Both groups imagine themselves being searched in inhumane and humiliating ways, physically restricted from travel, detained, or perhaps indefinitely delayed.
Read More: Trump’s ‘Biological Truth’ Executive Order is Not Based in Biology or Truth
These fears are grounded in reality. News outlets have reported that a trans passenger boarding a domestic flight was “flagged by airport security and accused of using a fake ID” because the gender marker on his driver’s license did not match that on his passport. Some trans people renewing their passports—including actress Hunter Schafer—have, in return, received passports displaying their birth sex. Others have been told that their passport applications will inexplicably face indeterminate delays.
New restrictions cement a long history of restricted travel for trans people. For as long as governments have issued identity documents, trans people have struggled with gender mismatches and other challenges. More recently, for instance, in 2015, a trans woman tweeted about her harrowing and humiliating experiences being detained and searched by TSA after the body scanner flagged her body as containing an “anomaly.” The TSA’s security systems have long required agents to choose from a blue or a pink button, forcing them to guess a traveler’s gender before they step into the body scanner (though, ironically, these machines have recently been adjusted to be more trans-inclusive). TSA’s machines then flag unexpected physical features—like extra tissue on a trans man’s chest if he hasn’t had top surgery—marking them with a yellow square on the screen. This signals a required physical pat-down, which must be conducted by an agent of the “same gender” as the passenger—an often confusing and uncomfortable process for everyone involved.
Driver’s licenses—often required documentation—are also fraught and unpredictable for trans people. Though it happened more than ten years ago, I will never forget the challenges I faced at the Department of Motor Vehicles when I moved from Penn. to Calif. after gender transition. The gender marker on my Pennsylvania driver’s license clashed with the one on my California birth certificate, throwing the information system into confusion. “We just need to send it up, and then send it back down,” the DMV worker kept saying. “What does that mean?” I eventually asked. I learned that that was their way of describing the bureaucratic back-and-forth between databases in southern California and those in Sacramento, the state capital. The systems were clashing on one key detail: my gender. I had already learned that for trans people, administrative tasks are rarely completed in a single visit. Every document-related process required multiple attempts, often dragging on endlessly, involving managers, phone calls, and sending things up and then sending them back down.
And yet, identification documents are fundamental gateways to mobility. They are, literally, our tickets to ride. And when something as basic as a gender marker or name carries immense risks, when a trans person’s ability to travel depends on a government that has declared their very existence invalid, then trans people in the U.S. do not have the same rights as other Americans. We are second-class citizens, and—if crossing a border means risking detention, humiliation, or worse—we are also trapped.
Many trans people—at least 5% of those living in states with anti-trans laws, according to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey—have already moved across state borders to maintain access to healthcare and basic rights. Now, many are considering leaving the country altogether. During my trip to Canada, I spoke with people who told me about the influx of trans Americans reaching out, inquiring about jobs, housing, and pathways to permanent residency. Though the U.S. does not yet meet the criteria for trans people to receive refugee or asylum status in Canada, trans Americans’ interest in moving north has peaked since Trump’s re-election.
My dad, the son of a Jew who escaped Europe just in time, texts me that he’s worried about how the administration is impacting me. My mom and stepdad are themselves moving to Europe, and on a weekly basis they urge me and my partner to follow. Having supportive parents and family outside of the U.S. are privileges I do not take for granted. But the sinister undertone from my parents’ message takes a while to sink in: between the lines it reads, what if you wait too long? What then?
While an executive order, or even a law, cannot actually dictate a person’s identity, it can make survival unbearable. American trans eradication may extend beyond forced detransition or reclassification in documents. Instead, it may happen through the relentless erosion of our rights, pushing us to choose between staying in a country that seeks to erase us or taking the risks necessary to cross the border one last time and seek refuge elsewhere.
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