In recent years, the state of trans rights across the Americas has been marked by a striking pattern of historic advances and devastating losses. While some countries have made significant progress furthering legal protections and recognition, allowing changes to names and gender identity markers on national identification documents, and social acceptance, other countries have worked to further marginalize this already highly vulnerable population, stripping them of rights that, in some cases, they had previously been granted.
In the United States, the Trump administration has made “eliminating gender ideology” a focal point of its agenda, specifically targeting trans people under the guise of “protecting women.” In Argentina–a former trailblazer in this arena with the 2012 Gender Identity Law which allowed individuals to change their gender identity on national identification documents–President Javier Milei has rolled back many of these advances through actions such as eliminating the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity and restricting access to gender affirming care for children and adolescents. In the English-speaking Caribbean, not a single country recognizes trans people’s right to protection.
The Americas continues to be the most dangerous region in the world for LGBTIQ+ people, with Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, and Peru recording more than 1,200 members of this community murdered in 2024. According to the transgender network Tgeu, “between October 2023 and September 2024, at least 255 transgender people were murdered in Latin America, accounting for 73 percent of the global total during that period.” The life expectancy for trans people in Latin America is just 35 years.
Government-led rollbacks on trans rights: Argentina and the United States
Historically, the LGBTQ+ community has always been targeted by conservative and religious groups. Recently, however, this intolerance is being compounded by the global rise in authoritarianism and the election of populist leaders seeking to undo the significant progress made towards greater legal protections and social acceptance, with a particular focus on trans people. In these contexts, the issue of trans rights has been catapulted into the center of the culture war, and, as a result, this population is often turned into a scapegoat for larger societal problems.
Levels of recognition and protections for the trans community vary widely across the region. Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay all have anti-discrimination laws that protect trans people, while trans people’s names and gender identities are legally recognized in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Uruguay. Unfortunately, many other countries in the region, including Venezuela and most of Central America, lag seriously behind, failing to grant even these most basic rights, leaving trans people even more vulnerable to violence and discrimination.
Under President Trump, the United States has been a leader in enacting policies restricting trans rights and pushing harmful narratives about the LGBTIQ+ population. According to the Interfaith Alliance, while “President Trump claimed to not know about Project 2025, many anti-LGBTQ+ ideas from Project 2025 have been implemented through Trump’s executive orders.” Policies that protected LGBTQ+ children and university students from discrimination were rescinded, while executive orders have been issued to officially recognize only two genders and ban trans and non-binary individuals from joining the armed forces or accessing gender-affirming care. There has been a dismantling of diversity, equality, and inclusion policies, programs, activities, and funding within government agencies, as well as pressure on universities and other organizations to do the same, or face defunding or other sanctions.
Prior to the Trump administration’s actions, the effort to block or dismantle trans rights was already broadly expanding at the state level. Currently, the ACLU is tracking 588 proposed anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S., 34 of which are focused on blocking transgender people from having their accurate gender on IDs and public documents.
Argentina has notably followed the example set by the U.S., taking on a high-profile role in attacks on trans rights. Despite formerly being hailed as a leader in advancing LGBTIQ+ rights in Latin America and globally, demonstrating major progress from the military dictatorship when homosexuality was violently repressed, President Javier Milei has worked to undo many of these historic advances.
In addition to dismantling the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity, Milei has also reduced the number of trans people working in government positions. An employment quota law passed in 2021 required the state to reserve 1 percent of all jobs for transgender, transexual, and travesti individuals. When Milei took office, 955 of the 5,551 allocated positions were filled by transgender people. Despite not being fully realized, the quota law enabled many trans persons to enter the formal workplace, advancing their visibility and acceptance in Argentine society. By May 2024, 105 transgender people had lost their civil service jobs.
Earlier this year, Milei issued a decree specifically targeting incarcerated trans people, stating that housing in prison will now be based on the gender assigned at birth or the gender with which the person is registered at the time of arrest, as well as prohibiting transgender women from being housed in women’s wards if they’ve committed crimes against women.
The Carceral Trap for Trans Women
Trans people routinely face situations of discrimination, stigma, and rejection by their own families; lack of opportunities for education and decent employment; and hence poverty and homelessness. As a result, some trans people work in highly criminalized informal economies, such as the drug trade or sex work, which makes them more vulnerable to police abuse and detention. While statistics on trans women in prison are sorely lacking, research shows that trans women are overrepresented in prison as compared to other groups.
While people in prisons across the region have their basic human rights denied, trans women are particularly at risk. Transphobia is disturbingly common in criminal legal systems. Trans women are also denied access to health care suited to their needs. Those who are undergoing transition processes often have their hormone treatments abruptly cut off. Some resort to self-administration of hormones or injecting themselves with cooking or vegetable oil, which can cause long-term medical complications, including infections, gangrene, and kidney problems. As most trans women are housed in men’s prisons, they are immediately denied their gender identity and put at risk of sexual violence. They are subject to invasive body searches and other humiliating practices, systematic physical violence including excessive use of force, and rape by both other people in prison and prison personnel. Those placed in solitary confinement (for their “protection”) face multiple forms of psychological and physical torture.
Violence Against Trans People
Latin America and the Caribbean remain the most dangerous region in the world for the LGBTIQ+ community, and particularly for trans people. Despite advancements in legal recognition and protections in certain countries, social acceptance of individuals with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities remains a significant contributing factor to the violence and discrimination that the LGBTIQ+ community faces. In 2023, of the top ten countries with the highest number of trans murders, seven were in the Americas, including all of the top five countries.
Brazil consistently claims the top spot on this list, even though it has historically been seen as a leader in LGBTIQ+ rights in the region. Trans people’s rights to employment, housing, access to businesses, and the use of public restrooms according to gender identity are protected. In 2018, the Supreme Court eliminated rules requiring transgender people to undergo a medical and judicial review to change their names on identity documents. The social security system also recognizes the chosen names of trans and transvestite people in their records.
In 2022, partly in response to Bolsonaro’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights and leaders, five trans people ran for Congress, with two of them winning their elections. Trans people being both included and accepted in the Brazilian government is a significant win for the trans rights movement, however, these legal advancements have unfortunately not translated into greater protection from violence and discrimination for trans people on the ground. For over a decade, Brazil has remained the country with the highest number of murders of transgender people in the world. Between 2016 and 2024, Statista Research Department reported that “at least 1,170 trans and gender diverse people were murdered in Brazil,” with 106 occurring in 2024.
Mexico presents a similarly contradictory situation as a country with several legal protections for trans people, yet it has the second-highest number of trans people murdered in the world. According to Human Rights Watch, 22 of Mexico’s 32 states now have an administrative procedure in place that allows for the legal recognition of gender identity. However, according to the Mexican Congress’s Commission for the Administration of Justice and Law Enforcement, from “2008 to 2023, 701 murders of transgender women were recorded in Mexico, and by October 2024, 55 cases of transphobic violence (52 of them related to this gender).” In a recent case, Khloe Susan, a twenty-year-old trans woman, was murdered in Tabasco in January 2025 by a man who went home with her after work and stabbed her to death. The case was categorized as a crime of passion, rather than as a transfemicide, a term that serves to legally recognize the distinct forms of violence faced by trans people as a result of their gender identity.
One of the most high-profile cases of violence against trans people in Latin America took place earlier this year in Colombia, where 164 murders of LGBTIQ+ people were recorded in 2024. On April 7, Sara Millerey González, a 32-year-old transgender woman, was thrown into the Playa Rica River in Antioquia, Colombia. She was cruelly dumped and left to drown after the perpetrators severely beat her, breaking her arms and legs. Rather than help Sara, passersby recorded her suffering and posted it on social media. The shocking video has since gone viral. Emergency personnel eventually arrived and transported Sara to the hospital, where she later died from her injuries. This horrific incident is symbolic of the dehumanization and lack of empathy trans people face. According to Wilson Castaneda of Caribe Afirmativo, violence against the LGBTIQ+ community is on the rise in Colombia, and the initial 2025 statistics indicate a tripling of this trend.
In countries where trans rights are even less advanced, like Venezuela and Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, the situation is similarly dire. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of LGBTIQ+ Violence (OVV LGBTIQ+), between 2008 and 2024, there were 137 transfemicides in Venezuela. In 2021, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights found the state of Honduras responsible for the death of Vicky Hernández, an activist with Unidad Color Rosa who was killed during the 2009 coup in San Pedro Sula. Despite this landmark ruling, the murders of trans people persist. According to the National Commissioner for Human Rights (Comisionado Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, Conadeh), 565 sexually diverse people were killed in Honduras between 2004 and 2024, with 149 of them being trans women.
Fighting Back
These statistics present a bleak reality for trans people in the Americas, however, all hope is not lost. Trans activists and allies in the region continue working tirelessly to defend and advance the rights of this powerful community, making more visible the immense challenges they face and refusing to let their voices be silenced.
In Mexico, following the murder of Khloe Susan, trans activists, including the United Tabascans for Diversity and Sexual Health (Tabasqueños Unidos por la Diversidad y la Salud Sexual, Tudyssex), organized a march urging for justice for Khloe and insisted that the crime is typified as a transfemicide, per Mexico’s Protocol for the Administration of Justice for the LGBTIQ+ Population.
In Colombia, after Sara Millerey’s death, civil society pressured the Colombian Congress to advance the Ley Integral Trans (Comprehensive Trans Law). This law aims to ensure and protect the rights of transgender and non-binary individuals, promoting their equality and participation in all aspects of society, based on self-determination. The bill seeks to improve access to gender-affirming care, secure legal recognition of gender identity, and promote inclusion in employment and education, among other objectives. If passed, it would become the most robust law in the world to protect people with diverse gender identities.
In April of this year, after Erika Hilton, a trans congresswoman from Brazil, was issued a U.S. visa falsely marking her gender as male, she filed a complaint with the UN against the Trump Administration.
In January 2025, Corpora en Libertad–an international network working with LGBTI+ persons deprived of liberty–disseminated a statement asserting that assigning trans women to men’s prisons denies their gender identity, puts them at risk, and violates their human rights. Corpora en Libertad and the larger social movement they are a part of should be at the center of designing, implementing, and monitoring public policies that dramatically reduce the number of trans people in prison, ensure their human rights and basic needs are met while they are in prison, and promote social integration upon their release.
These demonstrations of strength and resistance, along with countless others throughout the region, show how the trans community in the Americas refuses to stay silent and allow those in power to strip them of their humanity. As Daniela Ruiz, a travesti activist who participated in the marches defending LGBTIQ+ rights in Argentina reiterated, there is a “ need to make ourselves visible, to be able to think about what strategy we are going to adopt against fascism and in the face of violence against our identities.”
All of us have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with the trans community. Human rights are universal for all people and should be applied equally for all.
