A biological man identifying as a woman who travelled to the Netherlands for refuge from the United States to escape discrimination has been interviewed by the Dutch television news show PowNews. He was placed in the refugee camp in Ter Apel, Netherlands. X user Sander van Dam shared a clip of the news segment in which the trans woman refugee is speaking about his experience.
‘Between here and there is a bunch of Algerians and Moroccans, or whoever, who think that LGBT people should be beaten,’ the interview subject says, making it clear from the very beginning that he is not having a good time in the refugee camp.
A refugee of North African appearance is also featured in the segment. He too stated that he does not think the refugee camp is a safe environment for its habitants.
‘Oh, it’s scary,’ the trans woman tells the reporter as the video cuts back to him. ‘It’s legitimately scary. I decided that my mental health is degrading so substantially being here that I just need to get out. The situation we have in the US as a trans person [is] not good, right? But here, I will be hurt or killed.’
Sander van Dam’s original post of the news clip got a modest amount of engagement, around 2,000 likes and 96 comments. However, it was picked up by the major right-wing X account Visegrád 24. On their feed, it has garnered 23,000 likes and 1,000 comments.
Earlier this year, the British newspapers The Guardian and The Observer ran pieces about American transgender people leaving the United States under President Trump to seek refuge in the more trans-friendly Netherlands.
The Guardian profiled Jane-Michelle Arc, a 47-year-old transgender software engineer from San Francisco, California, who was also placed in the Ter Apel migrant camp. He claimed to have been targeted for harassment or assault multiple times in the US since President Trump took office—despite living in one of the most liberal cities in the world.
The piece does mention that most of the other refugees in the camp are from Africa, from countries such as Eritrea, a country under a North Korea-type dictatorship, or the war-torn Syria and Libya. However, it makes no mention of the attitudes of migrants from those countries towards trans people.
Arc also speaks of his struggles to get a work visa in the Netherlands as someone not from the European Union, which goes to show you that President Trump’s United States is not the only country in the world to take vetting of the incoming immigrants seriously.
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