On Easter Weekend, Hannah Kreager stuffed a few bags into her 2015 Honda Civic, hugged her parents goodbye, and pulled out of their driveway in Tucson, Arizona, unsure when she would see them again.
Ahead stretched 1,700 miles to Calgary, Alberta—a city and a country that she barely knew. The plan was simple: crash on a friend’s couch and figure things out later. Once she had crossed the border, Kreager, 22, filed for asylum.
Kreager is a trans woman, and she no longer felt safe in America, the land of her birth. “Tucson is actually a pretty cool spot,” she told me. “It was the federal government that was terrifying me.”
On Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump signed an executive order declaring male and female the only two recognized sexes, limiting how trans and nonbinary people may identify themselves on federal documents or access facilities. Another executive order branded gender-affirming care for minors “mutilation” and yanked funding for puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries. In April, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services told state Medicaid agencies not to cover gender-affirming care for minors.
