Emergency Preparedness

This page lists some general emergency preparedness steps that will be useful to go through now as the situation in the United States develops. For more acute preparedness, please see the Evacuation Checklist: The Seven "P's" of Emergency Preparedness.

Get your paperwork in order

Even if you are planning on staying in the US for the time being, it is useful to have all your paperwork up to date in case your situation should change on short notice. Some of these processes take several weeks to complete, so you can save yourself a lot of trouble by doing them now.

Get a passport. You will need it for any international travel. Be aware that the US State Department has suspended processing passport applications with a gender marker that differs from what they have on record. Warning: There are reports of applicants having their passport applications put on hold and important documents like birth certificates that were sent in with the passport application being withheld if the State Department has conflicting information about a person's gender. You can find a good overview on the current situation in this Google Doc (log out of your Google account before visiting the link to protect your privacy). If you have not legally changed your gender marker in the US yet, consider keeping it that way until you have had the chance to obtain a passport and leave the country. You may have a better chance of updating your gender marker from a safer jurisdiction in the future. If you already have a valid passport with a changed gender marker and it is not about to expire, do not attempt to renew it.
Get your birth certificate and have it apostilled - this is a state-recognized form of having a document notarized. You will need it to apply for a visa in many countries.
Get any high school or university diplomas apostilled (see above, needed for some visa types).
Get your criminal records and have them apostilled (see above).
If you have pets, have them microchipped and update their rabies vaccinations (further information on emigrating with pets here).

Which institution is responsible for getting an Apostille on my documents?

It depends on which official administrative unit made & signed your document, i.e. whether it's a federal or state document. The state department has a list of which authorities can apostille which documents (archived here). Generally, documents signed by U.S. federal officials, U.S. consular officers, Foreign consuls registered with the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Protoco and Military notaries or judge advocates need to be apostilled by the state department.

If your document is signed by state officials or other sources, this list can help finding the correct authorities to get an apostille from.

Pack a go bag

For information on what to pack, check out this guide.

Protect yourself online

Depending on how the situation changes, it will likely be prudent to protect yourself online. This includes a few primary things:

Be careful what you post on various social media and what account(s) you use to post it
Protect your personally identifying information
Use a VPN or Tor for browsing sessions to protect your online activity

Social media

It probably does not come as a surprise, but there is and has been extensive monitoring of social media by the United States government even before the current situation. The Brennan Center has a blog post that summarizes their research that is worth reading to get some context (5-10 min). The gist is that you should assume that everything that you post in any form; text, video, or image; is being processed and archived. If you are at risk under the current government, what this means for you is that you will want to take a few steps to protect yourself.

Stay off X/Twitter and Meta properties like Facebook and Instagram. This may be obvious, but many people stay because of existing communities, especially in the case of the latter where insulated groups of people interact without interacting with general users.
Even non-X/Twitter and non-Meta social media frequently require email addresses to create an account and store the IP addresses of the devices accessing that account. That means that the company or organization that is hosting the social media platform has that data stored.

This does not mean you cannot use social media at all. Due to the public nature of social media, it can be a great asset for finding help and support. That said:

Do not post anything illegal
1. Note: If you're thinking "I don't post calls for violence or revenge porn, what the heck is this about?" Remember that 1 ) law =/= morality and 2 ) anything can be criminalized at any time, especially in current circumstances.
Do not post anything identifying
Do not post any specific-to-you exit plans or strategy

If you connect with social support and/or mutual aid networks via social media, is important to switch to secure, encrypted communication as soon as possible. Signal is a great tool for this that has the benefit of 1 ) being really, really common and 2 ) really easy to use. Do not use insecure chat / SMS applications, especially not those owned by organizations that are actively backing the current regime (looking at you, WhatsApp).

Personally identifying information

Many people associate discussions around personally identifying information, or PII, with social security numbers, home addresses, full legal names, etc. While this is also PII, PII is more broad than that. PII is any information that means people can deduce who you are. For example, let's say you make a post without your name but as the "trans journalist at News Agency". Well, if there's only one trans journalist at News Agency, then even without your name it is known that you are the author of that post. Further, if whatever you are posting warrants request for information to the social media platform (court order, etc.) it can also be paired with account holder information that can tie your post back to you.

You should also establish trust with any person or groups you connect with online. There are many groups out there looking to help trans people get to places of safety. There are also a lot of malicious, hateful people who are willing to put forth significant effort to doing harm to trans people and others they identify as being worthy of attack. Make sure that as you're sharing thoughts and advice about how to go to safe spaces you are not disclosing anything specifically identifying about yourself and/or any safe houses you may be connecting with. That said, discussing general strategy is reasonably safe, for example how to get to a land border or what types of items to pack in a go bag. The caveat here is to keep track of what you're divulging so that you don't accidentally cross a threshold into sharing information about you.