Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential election, and since anti-trans rhetoric has been a central plank of both his campaign and the policies behind it, the prospects are not looking good for America’s trans people. Our advice to trans Americans is to leave the USA in any way possible before he has a chance to clamp down, so this document will consider how the trans community in safer parts of the world can ensure that there are adequate support structures in place when that happens. Our target audience today then are trans groups, allies, and activists outside the USA, who will be instrumental in providing that help.
Providing Safe Accommodation
What do we mean when we talk about help and support? Many arrivals from America will have nowhere to go, so safe accommodation will be of the most use to them. We don’t expect that support to spontaneously arise from the wider community as it did with the Ukrainian refugees, instead it’s up to us in the trans community to step up to the plate.
Others will be needed to help them with legal or immigration issues, meanwhile the most important thing for them on arrival will be to know that they will not end up on the streets. This accommodation is, we think, best provided by individuals sharing their spare bedrooms or similar, and not by attempts to set up safe houses. A safe house is a complex thing to set up and get right, and on our travels we have seen more than one with significant problems.
This is too big for a single group
Here at Trans Rescue, we know that our small network will not be anywhere near enough to handle the likely numbers of trans Americans needing help. To provide that support it will be necessary for a much wider coming together of groups and individuals to work in unison. This is a much bigger task than any single group can handle.
It will be difficult for one international body to coordinate their support from a central point, so we think that each country should have its own groups meeting the needs of its arrivals. This could be a single point in the case of a small country, or a grouping of regional or provincial ones in the case of large countries such as Canada.
We would expect that national or regional groups would work with each other in some way at a higher level, indeed we view this cooperation as essential. Our experience shows that when such entities fail to talk to each other it is inevitable that some passengers will disappear in the voids left between them. When lives are at stake there is no room for egos.
How can this be done?
So, who is going to do this? It’s likely that there will be many activists willing to take up the baton, but we’d like to exercise a word of caution about going it alone. This is much too large a task for a single person, particularly one who is learning on the job. Down that road lies burnout and failure, so given the short time available to organise, it’s imperative that people work together.
Whoever does it, the very nature of the job will require an extensive network to be built in a very short time, and the best placed to do this might be some of the existing support structures. Over the last few years we’ve seen very effective activism in the field of trans healthcare, and we’re guessing that groups of that nature might be best placed to provide the necessary networks. Working with local trans support groups that could find the people on the ground with spare capacity, and perhaps more importantly vouch for their not being problematic, they could then match those hosts with their arrivals.
It’s likely that running such an operation will require some significant time from those involved. Far from simply putting up a website to match arrivals with hosts, this will need people to work the phones, maintain the network, check out issues on the ground, and support people wherever they end up. The volunteers running the operation will need to be aware they are making as significant a commitment as taking a second unpaid job for a few months, and it’s important that they do not overwork themselves and burn out.
We think that the trans communities in countries outside the USA can provide this level of support to trans Americans fleeing a Trump presidency. We hope that this document has given something of a pathway by which that can be done, and we are looking forward to working in whatever way we can with whatever groups appear in this space.
When this is eventually over, we all want to be able to look back at a successful operation to help those trans Americans who escaped Trump. Are you ready to join us?