Jewish Americans Feel Echoes of History in Trans Passport Restrictions

This story was originally reported by Orion Rummler of The 19th. Meet Orion and read more of his reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Camins Bretts, who is 61 and lives in Seattle, has crossed the Canada-United States border many times for work, family and romantic partners. But because he’s a transgender man, at least half a dozen of those trips ended in him being detained by U.S. border officials. 

At various points Bretts has been pulled aside and questioned for traveling with identity documents that list him as male, as well as papers that identified him as female. Because of his gender expression, he has frequently been accused of lying about who he is. To find a solution, Bretts applied for a passport with an ‘X’ gender marker on Jan. 22. 

He was denied. By that time, the Trump administration had begun blocking new passports for trans Americans. 

All of this feels familiar to Bretts. It reminds him of how Jewish people were kept from accessing legitimate travel documents when Nazi Germany was in power — leaving Jews across multiple countries unable to flee rising violence. It reminds him of what happened to his family. 

He’s not alone. As the Trump administration targets marginalized groups, including migrants and trans people, LGBTQ+ Jewish people told The 19th that they increasingly feel that history is in danger of repeating itself.

As the Nazis invaded the Baltic states in the 1940s, scores of Bretts’ relatives died in Lithuania. Their travel documents identified them as Jews, so they were barred from leaving the country to escape violence. Their rights were curtailed. The people who would have been Bretts’ great-aunts and great-uncles disappeared, with no records of their death or last known locations. He assumes they were killed in anti-Jewish raids, or pogroms, carried out by locals. 

Bretts sees his new passport as an invitation for abuse. Just as his family was forced to use documentation that exposed them to violence, he and other trans Americans are carrying documentation that exposes them to abuse when they travel, he said. Preventing trans Americans from accessing accurate passports is just one more way to make life intolerable — and it’s intentional, Bretts said. The confusion that trans people now face when they travel, and the decisions they have to make, are designed to frighten and destabilize them, he said. 

“It’s the same story, in miniature, of what happened to my family. They had the wrong thing stamped on their identity documents,” he said. “I'm not expecting what’s going on in the U.S. to get to the point of, you know, impromptu death squads … but nonetheless, I, like many other people with non-matching identity documents, am now stuck.” 

For over 30 years, Bretts has lived publicly as a man. Now he has been given a passport that says he’s a woman. Although it’s a valid American passport, Bretts knows from experience that U.S. border officials often poorly handle inconsistencies between someone’s gender and their paperwork. He’s already canceled three trips and sought legal advice on whether he should leave the state, let alone the country. The answer he’s gotten so far is to stay put. 

Due to the Trump administration’s new policies, transgender Americans across the country now hold passports that out them as being trans and leave them at risk of being harassed if they use these for travel. Their passports are labeled with a gender marker that is at odds with how these travelers look and, in many cases, how they are classified on their other identity documents. 

Federal agencies are carrying out executive orders from President Donald Trump that all share a common goal: removing transgender and nonbinary people from public life wherever possible. That includes restricting access to accurate federal identity documents. The State Department is no longer issuing U.S. passports with ‘X’ gender markers, and applications from Americans seeking to update their passports with a new gender marker are being denied. In some cases, trans people have tried to renew expired passports that were already aligned with their gender identity only to receive passports that list their birth sex. 

Kris Haas and Jordan Gregor have also been feeling on edge, though it’s not just because of how the Trump administration has targeted transgender Americans. As a lesbian Jewish couple, they feel their religion is being used as an excuse to target vulnerable people, like the foreign college students who are being detained and deported by the federal government for their pro-Palestinian advocacy or sympathy while living legally in the United States. Trump has accused these students of engaging in “pro-terrorist, antisemitic, anti-American activity.” 

Haas, who is nonbinary, said they are frightened of what they see as parallels between Adolf Hitler’s actions and rhetoric in the 1920s and 1930s and those of the current U.S. president. They listed examples: In his rise to power, Hitler contested election results, railed against the failings of representational democracy, and relied on emotion rather than logic when giving speeches.  

Then, there’s Elon Musk, the billionaire who has spearheaded an effort to purge the federal government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. At Trump’s inauguration celebration in Washington, D.C., Musk made a gesture that many people, including neo-Nazis, interpreted as a Nazi salute. He has denied that it was his intention. 

“We know where this train continues to,” Haas said. “We need to stop it now.” 

Robbie Medwed isn’t trans, but he has watched the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on transgender Americans with growing fear of what comes next. He sees many similarities between this administration and the authoritarian playbook that Hitler used to come into power — especially in the focus on trans people, a sliver of the country’s population. 

For Medwed, a gay and cisgender Jewish man, the parallels between political conservative calls to “eradicate transgenderism” and the rhetoric that fueled laws outlawing Judaism are clear.   

“I think there’s a very obvious effort right now to target, other and remove trans people — at the very least, from public life, and at the very worst, prohibiting trans existence,” he said. And although transgender people are an easy target, since many people still have no idea what being transgender means, Medwed doubts they’ll be the last one. And that feeling, too, comes from family experience. 

Medwed’s grandparents were Holocaust survivors. As he grew up, his parents and grandparents shared a common refrain, a frequent reminder for their family: “Every good Jew has a passport. Every great Jew has two.” 

Growing up, Medwed thought this was a joke. Now, that often-repeated saying from his childhood has started echoing in his ears again. As he watches trans Americans being denied passports that accurately reflect who they are, he has gotten nervous about the possibility of his own documentation being taken away. He renewed his passport in February. 

“I absolutely think that Trump has been using what I call Hitler's playbook,” he said. “I don't think we're at 1939 or 1940. I think we're at 1933, at the very beginning of all the laws coming to place that were set into motion to start to other and outlaw Jews and Judaism. We're not there yet, but I absolutely think we are on the way.”

These parallels have been on Rabbi Micah Buck’s mind for years. In 2023, when states faced a significant onslaught of anti-trans bills, Buck, who uses he/they pronouns, watched as access to gender-affirming care and discrimination protections for trans people in Missouri came under attack. As a transgender rabbi, they were shaken; they considered moving their family out of the state. 

In an op-ed written in 2023, the rabbi detailed how they struggled with the decision: “It’s deeply frightening and personal. Every trans person I know is asking themselves the same questions that I am: Should I leave now? If not now, when? And how will I know?” 

He continued: “I keep thinking about my mother and her parents who, as persecuted Jews, fled Egypt in the 1950s. I remember my grandmother Juliette telling me about the nights they spent by the radio, listening to the news and deciding when or whether to flee.” 

Ultimately, they decided to stay in Missouri. That’s where their community is. Now, as more trans Americans wonder if they should leave the country, he is reflecting once again on how Jewish transgender people are grappling with deep-seated, intergenerational trauma as they weigh the same questions that their ancestors did. 

“Not having access to a passport, not being able to renew a passport, lands as particularly terrifying for people who carry that story,” he told The 19th. 

Although Medwed sees the U.S. moving in a dangerous direction, he doesn’t think it's too late to change that trajectory. Other cisgender people, and anyone else with the safety and privilege to be loud in opposition to hateful policies, need to step up, he said. 

“I think it’s our responsibility to step in front sometimes and do the loud yelling because we’re not going to be in danger in the same way. Don’t talk over people, but have those conversations where others aren’t able to,” he said.