For months, critics of the Trump administration warned that transgender Americans would have no choice but to flee the country. One California software engineer decided to do exactly that. The experience did not unfold as expected.
According to the Daily Mail and The Guardian, Jane-Michelle Arc, a 48-year-old software engineer from San Francisco, traveled to the Netherlands seeking asylum after concluding that remaining in the United States had become unsafe. Arc cited experiences of harassment in San Francisco, including confrontations while using women’s restrooms and what was described as a frightening encounter involving a truck. In an interview with The Guardian, Arc said daily life had become so stressful that leaving home felt impossible without an Uber waiting outside.
Upon arriving in Amsterdam, Arc reportedly approached immigration officials to ask about seeking asylum.
“And they laughed because: what’s this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum? And then they realized I was serious,” Arc told The Guardian.
The response highlighted a reality that many Americans rarely consider: other countries also enforce immigration laws, including asylum procedures that can be far less accommodating than many expect.
BS BRIEF: Jane-Michelle Arc, a 48-year-old software engineer from California who sought asylum in the Netherlands after leaving the United States, says he now fears for his safety inside and around the country’s largest asylum reception center, Ter Apel. Dutch authorities have…
— Common Sense with Chad Law (@chadparkerlaw) July 27, 2026
According to The Guardian, Dutch authorities directed Arc to Ter Apel, the country’s primary asylum reception center. The facility has struggled with overcrowding in recent years, and some asylum seekers have reportedly been forced to sleep in tents when indoor space was unavailable.
Arc described difficult conditions at the camp and said other residents questioned why an American would seek asylum in the Netherlands.
“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.'”
Arc argued that the experience of being transgender differed from that perception and compared personal fears to those expressed by asylum seekers from countries facing severe political instability.
Over time, however, Arc’s concerns shifted from life in the United States to conditions inside the Dutch asylum system itself.
Speaking to a Dutch media outlet, Arc said it felt unsafe even to walk to a grocery store because of some of the people residing at the camp.
“The situation I have in the U.S. as a trans person, not good right, but here, I will be hurt or killed,” Arc said.
Arc also remarked, “Between here and there, there’s a bunch of Moroccans or Bulgarians or whatever that think queer people should be beaten.”
Those comments represented a striking contrast to the expectations that accompanied the move. A country often praised internationally for its progressive social policies had, in Arc’s view, become less secure than the place that had been left behind.
Arc later chronicled the experience in a lengthy Substack post, describing significant physical and emotional distress during the stay in the Netherlands. The posts recount severe anxiety, isolation, heavy drinking, and disappointment with the Dutch immigration system before ultimately concluding that returning to California was the better option.
In a subsequent post after returning to the United States, Arc wrote that federal identification policies resulted in government documents once again identifying Arc as male, a change attributed to revised federal policy regarding sex markers.
