"Nahia Riviera was thousands of miles from home in a Norwegian centre for asylum seekers last December trying to flee the United States, where she no longer felt safe, when she said she was sexually assaulted.
Riviera, a transgender woman, said strangers' verbal abuse, her poor mental health and U.S. administration policies such as a ban on new trans military members left her feeling she had to leave.
'I feel like I'm forced to hide,' Riviera told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. '(It) was the only option to live.'
Trans asylum seekers have recounted assaults, harassment and abuse in immigration facilities in the United States and Britain and refugee camps in Europe, after being held with men who targeted them for their gender identity.
Of 28 U.S. facilities that held 112 trans people as of May 28, only two were designed to keep trans people separate, but even there they remain vulnerable.
In a letter sent in March by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other advocates to government agencies, 12 trans women and gay men in a U.S. immigration centre reported experiencing 'rampant sexual harassment.'
Sexual assaults on trans women in U.S. custody were also documented by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch in 2016 and the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2015 and 2013.
And at least one instance of a trans asylum seeker housed with men who was raped has been documented by Transgender Europe, a regional advocacy group, while media has reported on trans people being attacked in Greek refugee camps."
