A 48-year-old San Francisco-based software engineer named Jane-Michelle Arc fled the United States after facing transphobia on the streets of the Bay Area when attempting to use women’s bathrooms. He also described a harrowing incident where he feared being run over by a truck.
Arc traveled to Amsterdam, seeking asylum in the Netherlands, and was granted entry. Dutch authorities placed him in Ter Apel, an asylum center that houses refugees from across the globe including Moroccans, Eritreans, Somalis, Algerians, Syrians, and others.
He later stated that he would have to return to America because his “mental health” was “degrading so substantially” due to the danger he faced in the Netherlands.
Arc told The Guardian: “They laughed because: what’s this big dumb American doing here asking about asylum? And then they realized I was serious.”
At Ter Apel, Arc described living in a 2-meter-square room covered with graffiti and what he feared were body fluids on the walls. He added: “It is too dangerous to walk to the grocery store because of the people that live in the camp, and I’m one of them, I live here.”
He also stated: “You see these guys in yellow vests, they actually wear them because there are so many stabbings.”
The Red Cross reported that aid volunteers feel “unsafe” at Ter Apel, with violence “cannot be controlled.”
Last year, 76 Americans sought asylum in the Netherlands — a significant increase from nine in 2024. Ter Apel even has a “queer block.”
Other cases illustrate similar risks: A Black American woman moved to Ghana to escape U.S. racism but returned due to issues including “big ass lizards,” “bullshit sand,” and the lack of snacks. In 2016, Otto Warmbier was sentenced to 15 years in North Korea after allegedly stealing a propaganda poster and was returned to the U.S., essentially dead. Similarly, Michael Fay, an American teen who vandalized cars in Singapore in 1993, received corporal punishment.
