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This past year has strained the relationship between Canada and the United States in ways that were unimaginable not long ago.Trade wars, talk of annexation and coercive threats of tariffs have shaken the friendly assumptions that underpinned decades of continental friendship and partnership.For most Canadians, the shift registers as economic anxiety or political affront.For LGBTQ Canadians, it speaks to something more immediate: how safe will they be if they visit their southern neighbor?To be honest, for LGBTQ Canadians in general, and for transgender travelers in particular, the United States is now in a category of destinations that requires careful risk assessment, because of how much has changed in the U.S., and how fast.For as long as most of us can remember, the Canada-U.S.border was one of the least complicated in the world.Most LGBTQ Canadians crossed it the way most Canadians did: without much thought.Even when political debates raged, the assumption was that shared liberal democratic values between the two countries created a safe baseline.A long weekend to attend Pride in New York, a winter break in Florida, or visiting friends in San Francisco: Canada’s LGBTQ travelers could usually assume they would be safe and welcomed.That assumption is now challenged.The current U.S.administration has not gone so far as to outrightly criminalize homosexuality and ban LGBTQ individuals from entering the country.But the overall context it has created for LGBTQ people — transgender people in particular — now resembles what human rights defenders have identified as preconditions for systematic persecution: the removal of legal recognition, the dismantling of institutional protections, an expansion of discretion within law enforcement, and the creation of a climate in which hostility towards LGBTQ people is becoming normalized in political discourse and action at the highest levels of government.The United States is not Uganda or Russia.But it is no longer the country LGBTQ Canadians can travel to without a second thought.The changes are legislative, administrative and cultural.They are discriminatory and vexatious.And they are increasingly frequent and cumulative.At the federal level, executive orders issued in the administration’s first weeks sought to redefine sex as strictly binary, biological and fixed at birth.For travelers to the United States, this has cascaded immediately into passport policy and processing identity documents at the border.Transgender Canadians now cross a border where their gender expression or their Canadian documentation, especially passports with ‘X’ gender markers, might expose them to scrutiny, questioning, or entry restrictions, even though their documents are valid and Canadian government-issued.Across the U.S., Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials appear to operate with expanded authority, reduced oversight and an unsettling focus on sexual orientation for LGBTQ travelers.Cellphones can be confiscated and their contents analyzed, resulting in arbitrary decisions denying entry or instituting travel bans.At the U.S.state level, the legal landscape has fragmented in ways that are difficult to track and easy to underestimate for LGBTQ travelers and families.Transgender travelers might risk confrontations or even detention in states that have enacted bathroom bans, if they use the facilities marked for their gender.And these state contexts are changing repeatedly.In 2025 alone, U.S.state legislators considered 214 bills restricting access to gender-affirming care, 127 to restrict trans participation in sports, 59 restricting bathroom usage and 280 to restrict gender affirming education.As these bills pass through legislatures, what is legal and what is prohibited is changing rapidly.And what’s fine in one state might not be in another — adding another layer of complexity and risk to cross-state road trips.These law and policy changes have translated into a shift in the cultural climate that makes prejudice and discrimination against LGBTQ people more socially acceptable and normative.Senior U.S.administration officials have made disparaging and dehumanizing statements about LGBTQ people, and transgender people in particular.None of this means that LGBTQ Canadians cannot travel to the United States, or that every destination poses the same risk.But the fact that safety now depends heavily on which state and which city one travels to should give all LGBTQ Canadian travelers pause.And as immigration enforcement raids with violent operations in Los Angeles, Portland, Chicago and Minneapolis demonstrate, even people in liberal states and cities have been the target of abusive enforcement.The preparation that LGBTQ Canadians now need to undertake for U.S.travel is the same as any country where the environment is hostile: research your destination carefully, get information from LGBTQ people living where you’re traveling to, understand which of your rights and documents will and will not be recognized, and, if needed, exercise discretion about your sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression to keep yourself safe.Most importantly, be aware that the legal protections you have in Canada do not necessarily cross the border with you.The hardest part of all this is not the new onus of pre-trip planning.It is the loss of something that felt permanent.For LGBTQ Canadians, easy travel to the United States was not just a convenience, it was part of a broader sense that progress, once made, held.The expectation was that cross-border trips to Pride events, to welcoming cities, to a country with its own long LGBTQ history and advancement of human rights, were simply available and would remain so.They still may be, depending on who you are and where you are going.But this can no longer be assumed.And when something cannot be assumed, it must be acknowledged.