The U.S. Used to Be a Desired Destination for LGBTQ+ Immigrants. Now, Trans Americans Are Fleeinghttps://time.com/7327131/trans-america-immigrants-trump/ 🔗Solcyré Burga (23 Oct 2025)
Lizette Trujillo climbs into a taxi two months after she and her family moved abroad with two items in her purse: her U.S. passport and a bottle of Mexican hot sauce.
The latter, a relic of her heritage as the daughter of immigrants, is scarce at the local restaurants in her new home more than 5,000 miles away from the one-story Tucson, Ariz., home she purchased in 2023, not knowing her family would be fleeing the U.S. out of fear for the health and safety of her trans son less than two years later.
"If you would have asked me in December, would we leave? I would have said no," Trujillo tells TIME. But seeing President Donald Trump return to the White House and sign an Executive Order that limited access to gender-affirming care for those under the age of 19 just a week into his second term, she says, "made me feel afraid."
Trujillo and her family are not the only Americans who have left the U.S. amid mounting restrictions on transgender rights. Rainbow Railroad, a global nonprofit that helps LGBTQ+ people escape state-sponsored violence, has received a record-high number of requests for help from U.S. citizens since Trump's reelection, according to Latoya Nugent, head of engagement at the organization. "That trend has continued," she says. "The U.S. continues to be the number one country where people are requesting help from," as of Oct. 6. Around two-thirds of the requests the group has received are from people who are transgender.
