The global landscape for LGBTQI+ rights is shifting sharply as authoritarian ideologies gain power, transnational anti-rights coalitions deepen, and governments increasingly weaponize gender as a site of political control. This year alone, the transgender community has seen countries such as Cuba, Germany, and Sweden advance protections for gender-diverse people; these gains stand alongside an alarming wave of coordinated regression. Nowhere is this more evident than in the United States, where state-led efforts are actively dismantling transgender rights and reshaping public policy around the belief that gender is fixed at birth.
In the United States, the elimination of the “X” gender marker on identity documents and the enforcement of Executive Order 14168 represent a profound rollback of federal recognition for transgender, non-binary, gender-diverse, and intersex people. This policy does more than impose a rigid male and female binary; it reframes transgender existence as a matter of national security. By casting gender diversity as a threat to public order, the U.S. government legitimizes heightened surveillance, secondary screening, and discretionary border control, targeting trans and gender-diverse travelers. For refugees fleeing gender-based persecution, this is not an abstract policy shift; being misgendered at a border crossing can trigger harassment, detention, or refoulement. For foreign nationals, including Canadians who hold “X” passports, this environment creates new barriers to safe mobility.
These rollbacks dangerously intersect with Canada’s continued enforcement of the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA). Despite overwhelming evidence that trans, non-binary, and intersex people face heightened discrimination and violence when forced to claim asylum in the United States, the STCA presumes the United States to be a safe country of refuge. This presumption no longer holds. Under current U.S. policy, LGBTQI+ asylum seekers—particularly those with diverse gender identities—risk being detained, misgendered, denied adequate protection, or fast-tracked through processes that fail to account for the complexities of SOGIESC-based persecution. Canada must urgently act by exempting trans, non-binary, and intersex asylum seekers from the STCA and ensuring they can seek safety without being pushed back into a system that increasingly treats their identities as security threats rather than grounds for protection.
Forcibly displaced LGBTQI+ people already face heightened scrutiny due to their vulnerability, lack of documentation, and exposure to anti-LGBTQI+ persecution. When states recast gender diversity as a security risk, they create direct pathways to violence. Inaccurate identity documents increase the likelihood of being misgendered in detention, denied entry at borders, or placed in unsafe facilities.
Rainbow Railroad is calling on civil society to defend gender-diverse documentation rights and to oppose policies grounded in a rigid, birth-based definition of gender. We call on the government of Canada to continue recognizing “X” markers and protect the mobility of those whose identities fall outside imposed binaries by exempting trans, non-binary, and intersex asylum seekers from the STCA to prevent refoulement into danger.
Safe mobility is not a privilege; it is a right that must be protected.