Netherlands court upholds decision rejecting asylum for US transgender woman

A Dutch court on Monday upheld the decision by the Netherlands government to deny asylum to US transgender woman Veronica Clifford-Carlos. The court acknowledged the worsening conditions for transgender persons in the United States, but held that she was not facing systematic denial of protection or essential services.

Clifford-Carlos, 28, is said to be the first person to have fled the Trump administration to seek asylum in the Netherlands. In September 2024, Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs Caspar Veldkamp told Dutch newspaper Parool that, while certain US rules affecting transgender people were “worrying,” they did not generally risk prosecution or serious harm.

The court, however, sent the case back to the immigration authorities for review because of a procedural error that undermines the basis of the original rejection, giving the applicant an opportunity to present new evidence to prove that she faces a “real risk” of persecution.

This condition particularly arises from Article 1 (A) (2) of the 1951 Refugee Convention. According to the convention, a person is considered a refugee and has a right to be granted asylum if he or she can demonstrate a “well-founded fear” of persecution, a real risk of harm or severe violations of their human rights. This definition factors in both general, systemic threats and the individual situation of the applicant.

Under EU law, Article 61 of EU Regulation 2024/1348  further allows for the possibility of denying protection to asylum seekers by designating other countries as “safe countries of origin.” This makes it legal for a state to reject an applicant if the person faces no “real risk” of imminent harm in their country of origin, and there are effective legal remedies in the event of any harm. The Dutch immigration authority currently designates the US as a “safe country of origin,” and this was upheld in this case by the Amsterdam court. Nonetheless, the Netherlands government has recently launched programs to grant “academic asylum” for researchers fleeing the restrictive scientific environment in the US.

Clifford Carlos stated that although she lived in San Francisco, which is known as a hub for nonbinary and transgender people, she had received death threats and harassment while walking down the street. She was also treated with suspicion in hospitals. According to her lawyer, the Dutch authorities underestimated the conditions in the US, comparing them to 1930s Germany under the rise of the Nazi regime.

US President Donald Trump enacted various measures limiting the rights of transgender persons, such as the exclusion of transgender people from military service and a ban on gender-transition care for minors. The government further restricted the right of transgender and nonbinary people to indicate on a passport the sex that corresponds to their gender identity. The current US administration also banned terms such as “gender identity,” “transsexual,” and “non-binary” in official communications, drastically changing the language referring to the LGBTQ community. Trump additionally has banned trans women from women’s sports competitions and sent trans women to men’s prisons.

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