‘No one is coming to save us’: Trans people are planning to move overseas rather than live in Trump’s America
Isabella remembers the moment she knew she needed to leave the U.S. It was March 2023, when Daily Wire host Michael Knowles gave a chilling speech to one of the most influential conservative gatherings in the country.
“There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It is all or nothing,” Knowles told the Conservative Political Action Conference. “For the good of society, and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen victim to this confusion, transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely: the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”
To Isabella, who is trans, this declaration was a clear sign of the Republican Party’s increasing embrace of hardcore anti-trans politics — and a potential harbinger of “genocidal action.” This spring, after years of preparation, she moved to Chile.
She is not alone. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in US v Skrmetti, which upheld Tennessee and other red states’ rights to ban transition healthcare for minors, four trans people told The Independent that the case had solidified their plans to escape the USA.
Like every single person interviewed for this story, Isabella would only speak under a pseudonym out for fear of reprisals from far-right extremist groups, or perhaps even government officials.
And while the Skrmetti decision only concerned trans children, those who spoke to The Independent feared that the Court’s reasoning could make it easier to restrict trans healthcare for adults too — as Republicans are already trying to do nationally.
“Before the 2024 election, my timeline for relocating abroad was more like five to ten years out, if at all. Before today, I was considering sometime within the next year or two. But now, I am thinking of moving by the end of the summer,” said Wayne, a trans man in his late forties in Washington state, on the day the Skrmetti ruling came down.
Though he also has personal reasons to leave the country, he said the Skrmetti ruling was “another falling domino.”
“I don’t want to leave my country, but things have been on a downward trajectory for trans rights for the past several years,” he said. “We have transitioned from a system of democracy into an electoral autocracy… no one is coming to save us.”
In the past few years, 25 U.S. states have passed laws restricting banning transition healthcare for minors, according to the pro-LGBT+ Movement Advancement Project — covering an estimated 37 percent of all trans under-18s.
Some states have also enacted restrictions on adult care, and Republicans in Congress have made repeated attempts to defund or limit access at the federal level.
Meanwhile, conservative rhetoric about trans people has become ever more venomous. Knowles likened them to “demons.” One Republican candidate claimed pro-trans teachers should be “executed.” Multiple serving GOP legislators have falsely claimed that random mass shooting suspects are trans, while Donald Trump Jr has alleged — contrary to all available evidence — that trans people are “the most violent domestic terror threat” in the country.
Then came Donald Trump’s second inauguration, and his blitzkrieg effort to centralize federal power under the office of the president. Since then migration has become a regular topic among trans people both online and in person, along with acidic social media debates about the ethics and class politics of fleeing one’s country.
“My plans for emigration have been in a holding pattern,” said one trans lawyer in her forties, who began transitioning roughly 25 years ago and is now considering leaving the country.
