A transgender Brazilian lawmaker says she refuses to visit the United States while Donald Trump is in power.

“I am afraid of what might happen to someone like me under an administration like Donald Trump’s,” Erika Hilton told the Washington Blade. “It is an authoritarian, anti-democratic government that has no respect for international law.”

Related

Black trans lawmaker asks UN to investigate Meta for new hate speech policies

“We’ve seen, for example, how ICE acted with extreme violence against people who held tourist visas and were simply visiting the country,” she continued. “There is a deep-seated fear of how people are treated by immigration authorities and law enforcement. All of this is terrifying, and it has convinced me that I should not set foot in the United States as long as a fascist government is in power.”

Hilton, one of the first two out trans people elected to the National Congress of Brazil in 2022, has made waves for her immense passion for fighting for the rights of marginalized people. The 33-year-old has spoken about wanting to make politics more appealing to young people and was named a Next Generation Leader by Time in 2022.

In April 2025, only a few months after Trump’s inauguration, Hilton was issued a U.S. travel visa listing her gender as “male.”  She had been scheduled to participate in a panel at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s 2025 Brazil Conference, but canceled the trip after receiving her visa.

Insights for the LGBTQ+ community

Subscribe to our briefing for insights into how politics impacts the LGBTQ+ community and more.
Subscribe to our Newsletter today

“I felt violated, disrespected, and I felt that my country’s powers were being invaded by a completely delusional person, a sick man who occupied the presidency of the United States and feels he owns the truth,” Hilton said at the time. “My Brazilian civil documents were disrespected.”

The incident sparked her decision to avoid the United States for the time being.

This past March, Hilton became the first trans woman elected as chair of the Chamber of Deputies’ Commission on the Defense of Women’s Rights. The role also made her the first trans woman to ever lead a standing committee in Brazil’s Congress.

She told the Blade the election is “a milestone for that dreamy young girl who, at 14, was forced into sex work on a street corner to survive, and who today returns to make peace with her past.”

“But even from where I stand now,” she went on, “I am looking back and pointing toward those who are still out there on those street corners, to remind them: we are capable of so much more. We are capable of building something far greater than the limited spaces that hatred and discrimination have reserved for us.”

While Hilton has found great success and Brazil’s laws are extremely LGBTQ+-friendly, the cultural environment tells a different story. Brazil has long been the deadliest country in the world for trans people.

Hilton has also faced brutal hate and resistance from her far-right colleagues in Congress, and she said it’s clear they have taken their playbook directly from Trump’s culture wars to stoke similar fears around trans people.

“When a government with the reach and power of the United States uses state institutions to roll back rights, it creates a ripple effect that fuels violence worldwide. It feels as if our historic achievements are being systematically dismantled.”

“Since the day after the inauguration, the Trump administration has signed executive orders denying basic rights and issued official statements that dehumanize the transgender community, branding us as ‘enemies of society,’” she continued. “The U.S. government legitimizes, incites, and encourages the hatred directed at a group that is already marginalized. In doing so, it fuels that hatred further, as it takes such rhetoric out of the shadows of anonymity and places it in the mouth of the president of a global superpower.”

Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.