Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office has received “many, many” calls about trans people’s struggles to update their passports in the last two weeks, a source familiar with the issue told The Standard Friday.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 declaring that the U.S. government would recognize only two sexes. The order also bars people from changing their gender on federal documents.
Nevada Nubes, a trans person who lives in the Mission, said the passport agency denied their request to update their name and issue a new passport showing their gender as X, citing the executive order.
Nubes said they mailed in her passport Jan. 24 to update their gender and name, which they recently legally changed. However, staff at the San Francisco Passport Agency office said they could not change the gender on passports, Nubes said.
When Nubes asked for the passport back, the office was unable to produce it. As a result, they had to cancel a Friday flight to Mexico to visit a friend who is dying of AIDS.
“They said they could only give me my passport with my updated name, and then my gender that was assigned to me at birth,” Nubes said. But the office later said it couldn’t even do that. “They’re holding my documents, and I’m not able to travel.”
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has instructed staff to freeze all passport applications with X markers, saying in an email that U.S. policy is “that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” according to the Guardian.
Nubes, 28, was born in San Francisco and raised in the East Bay. They said they reached out to Pelosi’s office for help and spoke with aides who liaised with the passport office and Western Passport Center in Arizona, where her document is being held. Nubes provided email correspondence that The Standard reviewed for verification.
“It’s very scary,” Nubes said. “However, I will not stand idle in the face of oppression and a fascist regime.”
A video circulating on social media shows another trans person talking about a similar experience in Los Angeles. In her case, passport office employees threatened to call police if she did not leave the office, she said. The Standard was not immediately able to verify the story.
Carl Charles, an attorney with queer rights organization Lambda Legal, said the risk for trans people of Trump’s executive order goes beyond scuttled travel plans. Charles said he’s heard reports of passport offices confiscating birth certificates, marriage licenses, and state IDs.
“In this instance, it is really the government that is setting up circumstances where trans people will be subjected to more violence and discrimination on the basis of not having identity documents that accurately reflect who they are,” he said.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, who represents San Francisco, called Trump’s executive order “dehumanizing.”
“The absolute cruelty of what they’re doing, it’s hard to even get your head around it,” Wiener said in an interview Friday, adding that his office had also received calls from constituents having issues updating their passports. “I never thought our country would go back to the days when we had classes of people who were not considered full citizens anymore, but that’s what this administration is doing toward trans people.”