The Wall Street Journal reports that an estimated 150,000 U.S. citizens left America in 2025 – a negative net migration not seen since the Great Depression in 1929.
Elliot Hefty is among those expatriates. More specifically, he’s among the 45% of transgender Americans who want to leave the country, or have already done so, according to The Williams Institute at UCLA.
“ We are experiencing the equivalent of an LGBT refugee crisis within the United States, where people are either feeling compelled to flee their communities, flee their states, or in some cases flee the country,” said Professor Abbie Goldberg, a scholar who authored the study for The Williams Institute.
Following a restrictive upbringing, Hefty began to identify as a trans gentleman in 2020. But it came with some troubling experiences.
Hefty says that KKK flyers were left on his front door. A neighbor got him evicted after complaining about a transgender flag bumper sticker on his car. He was fired from his job after taking a day off for a medical appointment related to his transition. Hefty says he was sexually assaulted while using a men’s bathroom and believes it was because of his gender identity.
Then, while living in Kentucky, Hefty made another life-altering decision following the 2024 Presidential Election.
“I’m crossing the street from my office building and someone comes up behind me and shoves me in the middle of my back, and I go sliding across the concrete, just across the pavement,” Hefty said.
“This person is yelling all these slurs at me, ‘f****t, t****y,’ all the classics, right? And I’m laying in the street bleeding. Not one person stopped to help me or see if I was okay. And I got up and I’m bleeding. My hands are bleeding, my knees are bleeding, my face is bleeding and I go back to the office and I’m like…‘I have to go home. I can’t do this today.’ And that was really when I was like, ‘Okay, nope, I have to get out or I’m going to die.’”
Accompanied by his brother, Koda, Hefty left the United States and currently resides in a refugee center in the Netherlands. A decision to leave is step one, and for others, step two means finding organizations such as Rainbow Railroad – whose name is inspired by the Underground Railroad – that help people in the LGBTQ+ community flee from countries where they’re being persecuted.
Following the 2024 Presidential Election, the nonprofit’s chief program officer, Devon Matthews, says they saw a spike in requests for assistance from people in the United States.
“ We have seen a major uptick in requests for help since the inauguration of the current president and the administration and its general anti-LGBTQI policies,” Matthews said.
“In the first 24 hours after the election, we received over 1,000 requests for help from individuals in the United States, many of whom were transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, who were really afraid of what was to come over the course of this current presidency.”
Compare the 1,000 requests Rainbow Railroad received from the U.S. in a single day, versus the 700 requests they ordinarily receive in an entire year. Matthews said it places the United States in the company of Uganda, Pakistan, Egypt, Afghanistan, Kenya, Iraq, Turkey, Canada and Russia – countries with a high number of LGBTQ+ individuals who are wishing to flee a nation of persecution.
In addition to the verbal and physical assaults that have driven people like Hefty to leave the United States, political rhetoric and legislation seen as discriminatory have targeted people in the United States based on their gender identity and sexual orientation.
Kelley Robinson is the current president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. She recalls when the HRC declared a national State of Emergency in 2023 for LGBTQ+ people.
“And I remember at that time, folks were like, ‘Are you sure? Isn’t that too much? Aren’t you crying wolf?’” Robinson said. “But here we are, a couple of years later, and all of those warnings have turned into a very horrific reality for too many members of our community.”
Robinson said HRC remains on the frontlines, fighting for the rights of people within the LGBTQ+ community. She said the current state of the nation puts everyone’s rights at risk. At the same time, she remains optimistic as the HRC has grown by one million new supporters since the 2024 Presidential Election.
While Hefty said he does miss some pleasures, like Taco Bell, convenience stores that stay open late, and watching a Baltimore Orioles game at a normal time of day, he does not foresee his return to the United States, not even for his sibling’s wedding. But he does feel supported in the Netherlands by his fellow LGBTQ+ asylum seekers who hail from around the world.
As his lawyer continues to fight for the approval of his refugee status, which is on appeal, Hefty also continues to fight for trans rights in the United States all the way from across the Atlantic Ocean, in the Dutch province of Limburg.
