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Ter Apel, a small, unassuming Dutch town near the German border, is a place tourists rarely have on their itinerary. There are no lovely old windmills, no cannabis-filled coffee shops and on a recent visit it was far too early for tulip season.
When foreigners end up there, it is for one reason: to claim asylum at the Netherlands’ biggest refugee camp, home to 2,000 desperate people from all around the world.
Some, like the Eritreans and Somalis, are fleeing war; the Syrians insist it remains unsafe for them to return home after the fall of Assad. But in the last year they have been joined by a curious new cohort: a bunch of Americans, who say they have feared for their lives ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Their presence has surprised many of the camp’s residents. “My dream is to go to America or the UK. America for me is the paradise,” said Usama, a 21-year-old Libyan-Algerian hanging around the main gate. “You can work, you can make a million if you have a good idea. Why they come here?”
It is a fair question. Last year, 76 Americans claimed asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch asylum and immigration ministry, up from nine in 2024. Unlike the UK, the Netherlands does not rent out hotels or houses for asylum seekers, instead housing them in fenced-off camps, officially called reception centres, dotted around the country.
Many of the American refugees, like Jane-Michelle Arc, a 47-year-old software engineer from San Francisco, are transgender. In April last year she flew into Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and, sobbing, asked a customs officer how to claim asylum. “And they laughed because: what’s this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum? And then they realised I was serious.”
Arc said the US had become such a hostile environment for trans people that she had stopped leaving the house “unless there was an Uber waiting outside”. She said she had been abused on the street and using the ladies’ toilets, and resolved to leave the country after a frightening incident when she feared a woman was going to run her over with her truck.
The customs officer gave her a train ticket to Ter Apel and told to report to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND). The first few days were hard, holed up in a 2 metre-square room covered with graffiti and what she feared were body fluids on the walls. In some ways she was lucky to be indoors: at least once in recent years the camp has been so overcrowded that new arrivals have had to sleep in tents outside.
Ter Apel is not a prison, but it looks a little bit like one, surrounded by fences, with guards on every gate. Residents are free to come and go but must be in their rooms each morning for a bed check. After their first few days in the central reception area, asylum seekers are dispersed to different low-rise blocks, where they are given a small food allowance so they can cook their own meals.
For Arc, that meant being transferred to what she calls “the queer block”, rather like a student halls of residence where all the LGBT asylum seekers are placed. There, she insists, sharing meals in the communal kitchens and over cigarettes outside, she found common ground.
They all feared the police as well as their governments and fellow citizens, she said. “We were in danger from the people around us. And in fact, all of us thought of America as a place we wanted to live in – a beautiful country of opportunities. And that’s all still true, but it was surprising and sad and validating that the people there – a trans dude from Tehran and a trans woman from Libya – our stories were so similar.”
Arc knows how that might sound. “I hear a lot of people saying: ‘You are an idiot. You came here from America.’ People will tell me: ‘Did you think about moving to California?’ And then I say: ‘Well, I lived in San Francisco’ and then they go: ‘Oh, that’s a heaven for gay people.’ But it’s different for trans people, particularly for trans women, to the extent that my experience in San Francisco, robot taxis aside, was indistinguishable from [that of] the people that I knew from Libya and Iran and Morocco and Algeria.”
Trans men are also unsafe in the US, according to Ashe Wilde, another American who has been living in Ter Apel since the end of October. He transitioned in 2019 and anti-trans hate has only grown since then, he said, particularly with the return of Trump, who was re-elected using the attack ad: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you.”
In his very first speech on inauguration day, Trump declared: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the US government that there are only two genders – male and female.” He signed an executive order denouncing “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex”, which effectively erased federal recognition of transgender identities.
“That was hugely shocking,” said Wilde, 40, “because Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states and one of states that’s really trying to preserve our identities across the queer spectrum, and I was still met with pushback.” People increasingly equated transgenderism with paedophilia, he said: “I was called a paedo and a groomer.” There were physical altercations too, he claimed.
Arc began to transition at the end of 2012, changing her ID to female the following year and having bottom surgery in Thailand in 2014. Yet Trump’s re-election meant no more anti-discrimination protections in their employment, housing, and healthcare. When her passport ran out, a new one would declare her a man again. So she left.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” she said in a Ter Apel cafe. “And I did it because I was afraid for my life. I didn’t do this in secret. I talked to everybody I knew. I said: ‘I am planning to do this wildly stupid thing.’ Everybody said: ‘I don’t love this for you, but there is no other option.’”
She could have applied for a tech job in the Netherlands and then a work visa. But that would have taken too long, she said. Hence choosing the nuclear option of asylum, leaving everything behind to live in a grubby refugee camp. She estimates there are between 35 and 50 other trans asylum seekers from the US in the Netherlands, though the Dutch government does not keep statistics on transgender applicants.
The chances of Americans actually being granted asylum are very low, according to Marlou Schrover, a professor of economic and social history at Leiden University, who studies the Dutch immigration system.
The UN refugee convention has very strict conditions, said Shrover. Not only must a refugee prove that they faced persecution in their home country, but they must also show that they tried to get help from the local authorities but were denied protection. “And after that, you have to see if there is a safe flight alternative within your country.”
Even getting beaten up by the police is not enough: “Of course Afro-Americans might say: ‘Look, I’m beaten up in the street by police officers, so I can claim refugee status in the Netherlands’ based on this. So the claim has to be really strong.”
For a claim to be successful, the US would have to start detaining trans people for their gender identity, suggested Shrover: “If the US moves towards putting people in prison, treating them really, really bad because of their [gender identity], and with no other claim added to the reasons why they’re in prison, then the situation would definitely change.” But simply denying someone the right to put their chosen gender on their passport is nowhere near enough, she added.
The Dutch authorities are also very wary about declaring the US an unsafe country and provoking Trump, said Shrover. They think: ‘How will it look? How will the Americans respond to that? We can’t do this to our most important ally, saying that they don’t have a functioning democracy.’”
Only in exceptional cases have US passport holders been granted asylum, according to the Dutch ministry of asylum and migration. In recent years “a few dozen” children with US passports have been granted asylum in the Netherlands, mostly dependents of Yemeni, Turkish, and Syrian parents, a government spokesperson said.
So far, no American has been successful since arriving during Trump’s second term. Among those refused and earmarked for deportation is Lisa Gayle Carter-Stewart, who fled Montana with her transgender teenager, 14-year-old Nox, last April.
“It was automatically rejected because America is considered a safe country of origin,” said Carter-Stewart. “Nox even told the IND during their interview when they asked, what will you do if you have to return to America? Nox told them: ‘I will kill myself.’ None of that was considered in their decision-making process.”
Nox has tried to take their own life three times at Ter Apel, said Carter-Stewart. “They are not getting on well. Nox stays in our room 24-7. They don’t go outside, not even on sunny days.” Still, she insists, Nox doesn’t want to go home: “Nox has said they’re glad we’re not in the US any more.”
Earlier this month, they were moved to a more family-friendly refugee camp near Leiden as they await their appeal hearing. “I would love if we did get a residence permit, and I could work again, and we could get back to living a normal life, and want them to feel like it’s OK for them to be themselves and to not feel judged every time they walk through a door,” she said.
Trans women fear a terrible fate if they are sent back to the US, said Arc. “My guess is that re-entering the US, we would be detained by ICE, or customs, we would be put into detention with men, and then that would lead to us being harmed or killed. And the method of execution is incarceration. I don’t think that the US government wants to murder me specifically. I think that they don’t care if I am murdered, and I think they think that I deserve it if I’m murdered in custody.”
For Wilde, a forced return means a forced detransition. Access to hormones has already become fraught in the US, he said: “Come 2027, there won’t be access to it via government healthcare, so you’d only have it through private providers. So without the hormones, you’re basically forced to de-transition. I can’t go back to that … I’ve been free for the last five years, almost six years. I can’t imagine trying to stuff myself back into that person that I used to be … I don’t know about physically, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually, I would absolutely be dead.”
Ter Apel, a small, unassuming Dutch town near the German border, is a place tourists rarely have on their itinerary. There are no lovely old windmills, no cannabis-filled coffee shops and on a recent visit it was far too early for tulip season.
When foreigners end up there, it is for one reason: to claim asylum at the Netherlands’ biggest refugee camp, home to 2,000 desperate people from all around the world.
Some, like the Eritreans and Somalis, are fleeing war; the Syrians insist it remains unsafe for them to return home after the fall of Assad. But in the last year they have been joined by a curious new cohort: a bunch of Americans, who say they have feared for their lives ever since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
Their presence has surprised many of the camp’s residents. “My dream is to go to America or the UK. America for me is the paradise,” said Usama, a 21-year-old Libyan-Algerian hanging around the main gate. “You can work, you can make a million if you have a good idea. Why they come here?”
It is a fair question. Last year, 76 Americans claimed asylum in the Netherlands, according to the Dutch asylum and immigration ministry, up from nine in 2024. Unlike the UK, the Netherlands does not rent out hotels or houses for asylum seekers, instead housing them in fenced-off camps, officially called reception centres, dotted around the country.
Many of the American refugees, like Jane-Michelle Arc, a 47-year-old software engineer from San Francisco, are transgender. In April last year she flew into Schiphol airport in Amsterdam and, sobbing, asked a customs officer how to claim asylum. “And they laughed because: what’s this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum? And then they realised I was serious.”
Arc said the US had become such a hostile environment for trans people that she had stopped leaving the house “unless there was an Uber waiting outside”. She said she had been abused on the street and using the ladies’ toilets, and resolved to leave the country after a frightening incident when she feared a woman was going to run her over with her truck.
The customs officer gave her a train ticket to Ter Apel and told to report to the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND). The first few days were hard, holed up in a 2 metre-square room covered with graffiti and what she feared were body fluids on the walls. In some ways she was lucky to be indoors: at least once in recent years the camp has been so overcrowded that new arrivals have had to sleep in tents outside.
Ter Apel is not a prison, but it looks a little bit like one, surrounded by fences, with guards on every gate. Residents are free to come and go but must be in their rooms each morning for a bed check. After their first few days in the central reception area, asylum seekers are dispersed to different low-rise blocks, where they are given a small food allowance so they can cook their own meals.
For Arc, that meant being transferred to what she calls “the queer block”, rather like a student halls of residence where all the LGBT asylum seekers are placed. There, she insists, sharing meals in the communal kitchens and over cigarettes outside, she found common ground.
They all feared the police as well as their governments and fellow citizens, she said. “We were in danger from the people around us. And in fact, all of us thought of America as a place we wanted to live in – a beautiful country of opportunities. And that’s all still true, but it was surprising and sad and validating that the people there – a trans dude from Tehran and a trans woman from Libya – our stories were so similar.”
Arc knows how that might sound. “I hear a lot of people saying: ‘You are an idiot. You came here from America.’ People will tell me: ‘Did you think about moving to California?’ And then I say: ‘Well, I lived in San Francisco’ and then they go: ‘Oh, that’s a heaven for gay people.’ But it’s different for trans people, particularly for trans women, to the extent that my experience in San Francisco, robot taxis aside, was indistinguishable from [that of] the people that I knew from Libya and Iran and Morocco and Algeria.”
Trans men are also unsafe in the US, according to Ashe Wilde, another American who has been living in Ter Apel since the end of October. He transitioned in 2019 and anti-trans hate has only grown since then, he said, particularly with the return of Trump, who was re-elected using the attack ad: “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Trump is for you.”
In his very first speech on inauguration day, Trump declared: “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the US government that there are only two genders – male and female.” He signed an executive order denouncing “ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex”, which effectively erased federal recognition of transgender identities.
“That was hugely shocking,” said Wilde, 40, “because Massachusetts is one of the most liberal states and one of states that’s really trying to preserve our identities across the queer spectrum, and I was still met with pushback.” People increasingly equated transgenderism with paedophilia, he said: “I was called a paedo and a groomer.” There were physical altercations too, he claimed.
Arc began to transition at the end of 2012, changing her ID to female the following year and having bottom surgery in Thailand in 2014. Yet Trump’s re-election meant no more anti-discrimination protections in their employment, housing, and healthcare. When her passport ran out, a new one would declare her a man again. So she left.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done,” she said in a Ter Apel cafe. “And I did it because I was afraid for my life. I didn’t do this in secret. I talked to everybody I knew. I said: ‘I am planning to do this wildly stupid thing.’ Everybody said: ‘I don’t love this for you, but there is no other option.’”
She could have applied for a tech job in the Netherlands and then a work visa. But that would have taken too long, she said. Hence choosing the nuclear option of asylum, leaving everything behind to live in a grubby refugee camp. She estimates there are between 35 and 50 other trans asylum seekers from the US in the Netherlands, though the Dutch government does not keep statistics on transgender applicants.
The chances of Americans actually being granted asylum are very low, according to Marlou Schrover, a professor of economic and social history at Leiden University, who studies the Dutch immigration system.
The UN refugee convention has very strict conditions, said Shrover. Not only must a refugee prove that they faced persecution in their home country, but they must also show that they tried to get help from the local authorities but were denied protection. “And after that, you have to see if there is a safe flight alternative within your country.”
Even getting beaten up by the police is not enough: “Of course Afro-Americans might say: ‘Look, I’m beaten up in the street by police officers, so I can claim refugee status in the Netherlands’ based on this. So the claim has to be really strong.”
For a claim to be successful, the US would have to start detaining trans people for their gender identity, suggested Shrover: “If the US moves towards putting people in prison, treating them really, really bad because of their [gender identity], and with no other claim added to the reasons why they’re in prison, then the situation would definitely change.” But simply denying someone the right to put their chosen gender on their passport is nowhere near enough, she added.
The Dutch authorities are also very wary about declaring the US an unsafe country and provoking Trump, said Shrover. They think: ‘How will it look? How will the Americans respond to that? We can’t do this to our most important ally, saying that they don’t have a functioning democracy.’”
Only in exceptional cases have US passport holders been granted asylum, according to the Dutch ministry of asylum and migration. In recent years “a few dozen” children with US passports have been granted asylum in the Netherlands, mostly dependents of Yemeni, Turkish, and Syrian parents, a government spokesperson said.
So far, no American has been successful since arriving during Trump’s second term. Among those refused and earmarked for deportation is Lisa Gayle Carter-Stewart, who fled Montana with her transgender teenager, 14-year-old Nox, last April.
“It was automatically rejected because America is considered a safe country of origin,” said Carter-Stewart. “Nox even told the IND during their interview when they asked, what will you do if you have to return to America? Nox told them: ‘I will kill myself.’ None of that was considered in their decision-making process.”
Nox has tried to take their own life three times at Ter Apel, said Carter-Stewart. “They are not getting on well. Nox stays in our room 24-7. They don’t go outside, not even on sunny days.” Still, she insists, Nox doesn’t want to go home: “Nox has said they’re glad we’re not in the US any more.”
Earlier this month, they were moved to a more family-friendly refugee camp near Leiden as they await their appeal hearing. “I would love if we did get a residence permit, and I could work again, and we could get back to living a normal life, and want them to feel like it’s OK for them to be themselves and to not feel judged every time they walk through a door,” she said.
Trans women fear a terrible fate if they are sent back to the US, said Arc. “My guess is that re-entering the US, we would be detained by ICE, or customs, we would be put into detention with men, and then that would lead to us being harmed or killed. And the method of execution is incarceration. I don’t think that the US government wants to murder me specifically. I think that they don’t care if I am murdered, and I think they think that I deserve it if I’m murdered in custody.”
For Wilde, a forced return means a forced detransition. Access to hormones has already become fraught in the US, he said: “Come 2027, there won’t be access to it via government healthcare, so you’d only have it through private providers. So without the hormones, you’re basically forced to de-transition. I can’t go back to that … I’ve been free for the last five years, almost six years. I can’t imagine trying to stuff myself back into that person that I used to be … I don’t know about physically, but emotionally, mentally, spiritually, I would absolutely be dead.”
