Earlier this month, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued its third Red Flag Alert for the United States regarding the Trump administration’s anti-trans laws. The Lemkin Institute shares: press release“The administration has moved from identifying transgender people as a threat to families and the nation’s military to claiming that transgender people are a cosmic threat to the public’s mental health and a major direct threat to the national security of the United States in the world.”
The news came on the same day the State Department announced new rules. Under this new guidance: “Strengthen vetting and combat fraud in immigrant visa programs.”All visa applicants will be required to disclose their “biological sex at birth” at all stages of the process, “even if it is different from the sex stated on the applicant’s foreign passport or identity document.”
Because the rule also requires applicants to the Green Card Lottery program to share passport information, intentionally collecting passport information that authorities know does not match their biological sex at birth creates a basis for denying prejudice against transgender people based on “fraud,” Alexandra Vaca said. Transit science explains.
As the new ruling states, “The Department is replacing ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ in accordance with EO 14168, Defending Women from Gender Ideological Extremism and Recovering Biological Truth, to the federal government. Under that rule, the term ‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s sex at birth. Only male and female gender options are available to immigrants who complete the Diversity Visa entry form.”
This policy completely negates the existence of non-binary, genderqueer, and gender-expansive people, and sets a precedent for transgender people to have their visas revoked and deported. 8 USC § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i)foreign nationals found to have obtained or possessed a visa “by fraud or intentional misrepresentation of material facts” will have their visas revoked and will be subject to deportation.
By requiring information about “biological sex at birth,” the State Department enforces discrepancies between documents and allows authorities to charge transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive immigrants with fraud. Therefore, transgender and non-binary immigrants can have their visas revoked and deported, and information collected from immigrants during the visa application process can be added to federal databases and used by immigration authorities, including ICE agents.
and Supreme Court Judgment Regarding allowing ICE agents to use racial profiling last year, Vaca argues, “The Trump administration gave ICE the reason it needed. Under this rule, ICE agents now have an enforcement rationale to argue that transgender people, especially transgender people from racial minorities, are more likely than cis people to ‘misrepresent’ themselves during visa processing and therefore ‘illegal’ to enter the country.”
This allows ICE agents to specifically target trans individuals because they are trans. If that purpose were unclear, the next day the Trump administration announced the following policy: 2026 Women’s History Month Statement“We are banning men from women’s sports, enforcing Title IX as originally intended, and ensuring that universities maintain and, where possible, expand scholarship and roster opportunities for female athletes. We are restoring public safety and upholding the rule of law in every city so women, children, and families can feel safe and secure.”
And this is not the first time ICE has targeted and harmed transgender and non-binary immigrants. Last June, Bella reported that ICE does not include transgender people in its detection targets in public reports, but in 2020 AFSC reported that Transgender people held in ICE custody faced “terrifying and ugly” conditions.
While this appears to be a new development in President Trump’s anti-transgender escalation, it reflects a deeply disturbing history of denying and destroying transgender people’s documents after Nazis took power in 1933.
In the early 20th century, Weimar, Germany, was a center for gender-affirming care through Maganus Hirschfeld’s Institute of Sexology. One of the first book burnings by the emerging Nazi regime resulted in the destruction of the Institute’s extensive clinical records and library by Nazi students and stormtroopers. By doing so, the Nazis virtually destroyed The world’s first trans health clinic and one of the richest and most comprehensive collections of information on trans healthcare.
Likewise, the Nazi governmentDisabled or Denied The idea is to allow transgender people a so-called cross-dressing pass, a pass that allows transgender people to avoid arrest under Article 175, which prohibits cross-dressing. The Weimar Republic (the regime that preceded the Third Reich) created specific documents that recognized and affirmed (in a limited way) the identity of transgender people and prevented them from being arrested. Disabling or ignoring these passes allowed police and Nazi authorities to target transgender people for harassment, extortion, and arrest, and the records of the passes themselves helped authorities target transgender people.
Changes in Visa Guidelines Parallel to Kansas Visa Guidelines Go to Undo Last month’s introduction of transgender driver’s licenses reflects the escalating violence against transgender people during the rise of the Nazi regime, which scholars like Dr. Laurie Marhofer are beginning to uncover. And in addition to last week’s ID revocation, the recent Fourth Circuit Ruling says states can deny Medicaid coverage For gender reassignment surgery.
The Fourth Circuit’s decision upheld the Scumetti Supreme Court’s ruling that bans on gender-affirming health care for young people are constitutional. The ruling expands this ban to include a ban on adult health care, allowing West Virginia’s Medicaid exemption for adult gender-affirming care to take full effect. What’s even more upsetting is the content of the ruling itself, which calls gender-affirming medical care “dangerous.”
As the Fourth Circuit opinion states, “It is not unreasonable for Congress to encourage the public to ‘respect their sex’ and not ‘disparage their sex’ by denying funding to experimental methods that may have adverse effects.”
Indeed, what this judgment and opinion reflects is the next step in government regulation and surveillance of the bodies of marginalized people. This next step from the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which removed federal protections for access to abortion, means denying people access to critical, life-saving care. And to be clear, gender-affirming care is not just for transgender, nonbinary, and intersex people. This is a dangerous escalation and echoes past violence against transgender people under fascist regimes. The Lemkin Institute is right to express concern.
Source: Washington Blade: LGBTQ News, Politics, LGBTQ Rights, Gay News – www.washingtonblade.com
