The American Trans Male Elliot Hilty (37), from Kentucky, puts his phone on the wooden kitchen table in the asylum seekers’ center in Ter Apel. “Look,” says Hift and shows a photo of a flyer signed by the Ku Klux Klan. “Go away or get deported!” Is it in thick black letters on the flyer that was stuck on the front door of Sleky a few months ago. “We were the only ones in our street who received such a note.”
HIJLY is sitting with fellow countrymen and Trans Persons Jane Arc (47, software developer) and Veronica Clifford Carlos (28, visual artist) in a noisy kitchen in the ‘Pinkhouse’ in the AZC of Ter Apel, the largest asylum seekers’ center in the Netherlands. The Pinkhouse is a building at the back of the site, intended for dozens of migrants who apply for asylum on the basis of their sexual orientation. The kitchen window overlooks a fence with barbed wire and a ditch. Behind it starts the Groningen farmland.
Elliot Hindy in the parking lot of the AZC near Ter Apel.
ARC and Clifford Carlos (both from California) and Hinger got to know each other in Ter Apel. They asked asylum separately because they no longer feel safe in the United States. Since President Trump’s sworn in early this year, laws have been introduced, so that the government only recognizes two sexes: ‘X’ is no longer a category. The financing of transgender care has been suspended for young people. And transgender boys and girls are no longer allowed to participate in sports competitions in the category of the gender with which they identify themselves.
It was called that a man was walking around in the women’s dress
The Trump government also demands that they cancel terms such as ‘transgender’, ‘gender’ ‘transsexual’, ‘LGBTI’ and ‘non-binary’ from their studies. Various research organizations took thousands of pages offline and removed the terms. With these words, according to Trump, an attempt is made to “undermine the biological reality of Sekse.”
Asylum requests
Since Trump has been appointed, the Dutch interest group LGBT Asylum Support has been at around twenty American Trans people who have an asylum application. This did not happen in previous years, according to the organization. ARC and HIJLY once came into contact with LGBT Asylum in the Netherlands, Clifford Carlos before departure from the US.
According to the IND Immigration Service, 33 Americans submitted an asylum application during the first half of this year. In the years before, the number fluctuated between five and eighteen. According to the IND, it cannot be said with certainty “that the increase is related to tightened laws in the US. After the inauguration of Trump, LGBT Asylum Support was approached by fifty trans persons from the US and this was ‘very clear’ due to the tightened legislation, according to the interest group.
Already during his election campaign it turned out that Trump had provided it with transgender people. He wanted to “banish the transgender madness from our schools and keep men from women’s sport”. Because, polls showed That Americans thought that rights for transers had gone too far.
Jane Michelle Arc with her dog Noah.
For the second term of Trump it was also unsafe for Trans people, Arc, Hanty and Clifford Carlos emphasize. ARC was a triathlete and trained tens of hours a week; She could be found in the gym every day. Until in 2022 in the dressing room of the gym an agent unexpectedly her ID card asked. The police officer turned out to be tipped, says Arc. “It was called that a man was walking around in the women’s dressing room.” The agent fascinated ARC, she says. He finally let her go when she showed her passport. “In my passport it says that I am a woman.”
But Arcs passport is less than a year. She fears that she will be put back in her new passport to her birth gem – man. “If I am checked again in the dressing room, I will go to the prison.”
Turning point
During his work, VerLey noticed for an organization that provides food and medical assistance to poor families that the re -election of Trump was a turning point. He and colleague Trans people were, for their feeling, degraded to “non -visible places” in the office, such as customer service. And Clifford Carlos, who identifies as a woman, then the government finally fled her in her passport as a man, while she has been registered as a woman at other institutions for some time.
At Schiphol they asked all three political asylum. Veronica Clifford Carlos traveled with her father. He went back to the United States after a few days, she says. Jane Arc brought her white dog Noa, who carries Arcs medicines against epilepsy for her neck. All three had never been to the Netherlands, they say, but read online that the rights of Trans persons are properly protected.
Life in an asylum seekers’ center is not too bad, they say. They share the upper floor of the house with LGBTI+people from Colombia, Iran and Kuwait. Ugandans, Nigerians and Ghanaians live on the ground floor, who have applied for asylum in the Netherlands due to their sexual orientation. They mainly spend their days on the grounds of the asylum seekers’ center, and sometimes outside.
I now realize how bad I had it
Veronica Clifford Carlos: “I walk to Ter Apel, go by bus to Emmen, by train to Groningen. I greet people and say ‘good morning’. I now realize how bad I had it.” Jane Arc goes to Hoogeveen every few weeks for treatment of her migraine. “It’s a liberation to be here.” Together, Cliffford Carlos and ARC occasionally smoke a joint.
Unsafe
The COA staff is often friendly and helpful, and security guards and police officers are understanding, they say. Clifford Carlos: “In the US you learn to be afraid of the police, that is not necessary here.”
Yet the asylum seekers center is sometimes also unsafe. When she sits down in the grass, he says, mothers call their children with them. And, he adds, men stares at him.
Clifford Carlos was grabbed by an unknown resident near the laundry room at her breasts. The COA reception organization could not do much about this, according to her, because it happened out of sight of the cameras. After insisting by LGBT Asylum Support, she was given a place in the house for LGBTI+people.
Veronica Clifford Carlos in Heerlen.
The Pinkhouse is shouted. Clifford Carlos looks outside. LGBTI+ASIE seekers from Uganda, Nigeria and Sierra Leone sprints on a man on sandals. “You will have Sandro there,” says Clifford Carlos. Sandro Kortekaas from LGBT Asylum Support is a fame in the LGBTI+community of asylum seekers, he has been supporting them during the asylum procedure for years.
The African queer asylum seekers take turns a selfie with short cheese. “The selfies are for their asylum file,” explains Verley: “By taking a photo with Sandro, they want to show the IND that they are active in the gay community.”
The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs adjusted his travel advice to the United States again, especially for the LGBTI+ community. According to the Ministry, this must take into account laws that deviate from what applies in the Netherlands, for example in the field of health care.
The first asylum applications have been rejected because the US, according to the Ministry and Immigration Service IND, is still safe
The first asylum applications from Clifford Carlos and Hinger have since been rejected because, according to the Ministry and Immigration Service IND, the United States is still safe. The IND relies on the ‘Office report about the US’ of Foreign Affairs for this. In the meantime, HIJLY has been moved to the ‘expansion location’ on the site and Clifford Carlos is moving to the reception center in Heerlen this week. HIJLY and Clifford Carlos are appealing against the decision of the immigration service.
Old information
The IND judgment is based on old information, find Hids, Clifford Carlos and Kortekaas, which is now also in the kitchen. “That information still dates back to Trumps” first term from 2016 “, according to Kortekaas. He therefore wrote a letter this month to outgoing minister David van Weel (asylum and migration, VVD) in which he states that the Netherlands ignores Trump’s ‘inhumane and discriminatory policy’. In a response to the letter, the director migration policy of the Ministry of Justice writes that although the ‘developments’ in the US are’ worrying ‘for transers,’ there is no well -founded fear ‘for’ persecution. For a ‘reassessment’ of the US ‘as safe country of origin’, is now no reason.
But that is not true according to ARC, Clifford Carlos and Hinger. Clifford Carlos: “I fear the moment the person who me bassoon [mietje] Calls a gun pulls and shoots me down. ” Her lawyer thinks she has a good thing, says Clifford Carlos.
In the meantime, ARC is waiting for an invitation with the immigration service for her first conversation. Employees of Vluchtelingenwerk Nederland say that she has to make her medical file in order, but what they mean by that remains vague, she says. “Trans people are medically well documented: every step is kept up to date.” But her file covers “tens of thousands of pages,” says Arc. “I have no idea which documents are relevant to the IND.”
ARC, HIJLY and Clifford Carlos may also have a ‘highly educated migrant’ or entrepreneur chance of paper in the Netherlands without requesting a political asylum, but they don’t think that is the right route now. “I am being chased by my neighbors and by the government and is in danger in my own country,” says Jane Arc. “That is a good reason for political asylum.”
Back to the United States they don’t want all three. HIJLY: “In America I have no home, no work and no health care – public health care for trans people has become unaffordable.” At the end of 2024, VerLy still paid 16 dollars for his pills, he says, a few months later it had risen to 180 dollars.
“Hey,” says Sandro Kortekaas “That’s a good example for my speech on the pridenice and concrete. ”
If Clifford Carlos can no longer appeal, she will leave the Netherlands, she says. She doesn’t want a life under the radar, without papers. She may then move to the Philippines. Her family lives there.
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