A Tucsonan is Claiming Asylum in Canada. Her Case Could Reshape How LGBTQ+ People Seek Safety Abroad.

When Hannah Kreager crossed the U.S.-Canada border on April 19, she carried little more than a friend’s promise of a safe bed.

The 22-year-old transgender woman from Tucson, Arizona, said she left amid fears that federal policies under the Trump administration could put her at risk—particularly after rumors circulated that Trump might declare martial law on April 20. After seeing those rumors, she said her father told her, “I’m getting you out of here by the 20th.”

Kreager’s journey is part of a growing wave of transgender Americans seeking asylum outside the United States. LGBTQ+ advocates say these cases highlight the urgency of these cases, but also the legal complexity of claiming refugee status from a country long considered safe.

There are at least two cases being fought in Canada—one of them is Kreager’s. Under the country’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, Kreager and her lawyer, Yameena Ansari, must prove a “well-founded fear of persecution.” Because Canadian law does not explicitly list gender identity or sexual orientation among protected categories, her team is arguing that transgender Americans constitute a persecuted social group.

But the path to refugee status is complicated for Americans like Kreager because of the Safe Third Country Agreement, a 2002 pact that bars refugees from claiming asylum in Canada if they enter from a country such as the United States. The agreement rests on the assumption that the U.S. can protect its citizens from persecution. Kreager’s legal team argues that this assumption does not hold in her case and says the agreement should be reviewed to account for the federal reach of the Trump administration’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies into states. 

Immigration courts have previously ruled that anti-LGBTQ+ policies occur on a state-by-state basis, and that people living in states with restrictive laws can simply move to a more supportive state.

Arizona’s politics complicate those assumptions. Although the state does not have as many laws restricting transgender life as Texas or Florida—two states where limits on trans life have prompted travel warnings for LGBTQ+ people—political shifts in Arizona could create a different landscape if Republicans win the governor’s and attorney general’s offices in 2026.

But even moving to another state may not be realistic with the federal government targeting transgender Americans, including by entertaining a rule that would nullify passports for anyone with a gender marker different from the one they were assigned at birth, or expelling transgender people from federal benefits such as military health insurance.

Those sweeping changes, migration experts say, have led to an increase in asylum claims that reflect both the severity and the geographic spread of threats facing transgender people in the United States.

Zara, a biracial Black transgender woman originally from Oregon—a state often considered a safe destination—offers another lens on the federal government’s expansive reach. She requested that her last name be omitted because of a past history of abuse. 

Zara fled to Canada after the 2024 election, citing fears that Trump’s incoming administration would implement CPAC 2023’s call to “eradicate transgenderism.” She says she experienced systemic racism and transphobia across multiple states, including Ohio and Texas, both traditionally conservative. But it was in Portland, Oregon—often portrayed as a liberal safe haven—where she said she experienced enough harassment and bigotry to feel unsafe in her daily life.

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“Proud Boys would come into neighborhoods to intimidate us, and the police would collaborate with them,” Zara said, describing Portland police’s refusal to intervene in persistent violence from far-right groups during protests in 2021. She recounted multiple instances in which people openly accosted her on the street with racial slurs and threats of violence. Her attempts to organize locally to protect Black trans people were often met with discomfort or indifference.

“With how resource-stripped everyone was, it wasn’t like these spaces were able to provide me the support I needed when I was vulnerable,” she said, noting Oregon’s struggles to operate statewide LGBTQ+ programs amid the Trump administration’s attempts to withhold funding and subpoena clinics.

Cait Glasson, a Canadian transgender activist who has been lobbying for recognition of transgender and nonbinary asylum-seekers, says recent judicial developments may signal openings for change.

Glasson points to the case of Angel Jenkel, a nonbinary American who recently received a stay on a refugee claim. “The judge wouldn’t issue a stay if they didn’t think there was probable cause,” Glasson said. She compared it to her experience in 2023, when she organized a parliamentary petition calling for formal recognition of transgender and nonbinary people for refugee status. The petition gathered more than 160,000 signatures, but the government largely dismissed it, arguing that existing law in the U.S. already provides protections.

Still, Glasson said she has seen conditions in the United States deteriorate since 2023, making legal protections for transgender refugees increasingly urgent. She likened the situation to historical cases in which Canada denied asylum to Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust, with devastating consequences: “They went back to Europe, where at least a third of them were killed,” she said. “We can’t let something like that happen again.”

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Legal experts say each asylum case carries the potential to establish precedent. Kreager is confident that a win in her case could open doors for other transgender Americans and could prompt a reinterpretation of parts of the STCA. 

Zara framed her efforts similarly: “What I’m doing is to ensure an alternative path, so that there is at least another place to go that is safer. I’m clearing the hedge so at least there is a path to walk.”