The State Department is reportedly ordering officials to deny visas to transgender athletes and potentially all trans people if their applications don’t match their sex at birth.
“If there is a discrepancy in either in the applicant’s documents or in electronic consular records, or if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant’s sex, you should refuse the case,” reads a Monday cable from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, obtained by reporter Erin Reed.
Violators found to be “misrepresenting their purpose of travel or sex” could be deemed permanently ineligible for future U.S. visas, according to the memo.
The memo says the policy change is in support of Donald Trump’s executive order from earlier this month seeking to force transgender people out of women’s sports.
The executive order threatens to defund schools where transgender athletes participate on women’s teams and directs federal law enforcement agencies to take “immediate action” against schools and associations that “deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms.”
As Trump signed the order, he warned that ahead of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, the U.S. would crack down on transgender athletes, whom he falsely called “men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes.”
Critics accused the Trump administration of overstepping with the new visa rules.
“It’s normal to say that people accused of fraud or misrepresentation are often considered to be ineligible. It’s usually a case-by-case determination,” Sarah Metha, senior policy counsel at ACL, told The Guardian. “But it is quite bizarre and novel in a terrible way to be saying it’s based on their misrepresenting their sex or gender in order to come and participate in an event in the United States.”
Visa applications are “adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, and we cannot speculate on whether someone may or may not be eligible for a visa,” a State Department spokesperson told The Independent, citing the recent Trump executive orders. “Whenever an individual applies for a U.S. visa, a consular officer reviews the facts of the case and determines whether the applicant is eligible for that visa based on U.S. law.”
The administration’s policies on sex and gender have impacted transgender and intersex people inside the U.S. too. The State Department will no longer issue new passports with a nonbinary “X” gender marker, and is suspending processing for those seeking to change the gender marker on their travel documents.
