Garrison Davis

This same sports-related memo, dated February 24, 2025, also states, "...if there is a discrepancy either in the applicant's documents or in electronic consular records, or if other evidence casts reasonable doubt on the applicant's sex, you should refuse the case under 221G and request additional evidence to demonstrate sex at birth."

Section 221G of the Immigration and Nationality Act is a temporary visa refusal pending further documents or information provided by the applicant.

For an athlete visa, the bar is very high and the burden is on the applicant to prove they have the special and rare qualities required to be eligible for a visa.

But the Substack article doesn't just claim that being trans could disqualify you from receiving a visa.

The article escalates its claims, stating that trans people who already have a valid visa could have it revoked and be deported for misrepresenting their sex in the past, citing U.S.

law that if an alien is found to have obtained a visa, quote, by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact, they are ineligible to be in the United States.

The article also refers to a section of the Foreign Affairs Manual which includes providing, quote, a fake birth certificate in support of an immigrant visa application as misrepresenting a material fact, unquote.

The article goes on to assert that the Trump administration could refuse to recognize trans people's amended birth certificates from foreign countries and essentially consider them, quote unquote, fake, thus making their visa eligible to be revoked by, quote unquote, misrepresenting a material fact.

The author of the Substack links to another one of her own articles on a new policy regarding the issuing of U.S.

passports with sex markers reflecting biological sex at birth.

The passport policy instructs State Department employees to check birth certificates for signs of being amended, and if they are amended, request more documents that list sex at the time of birth, such as medical records, hospital records, or early school records.

ACLU staff attorney Picasso says that this does not mean entire amended birth certificates are quote-unquote fake for the purposes of establishing fraud or willful misrepresentation, which is, again, a high bar.

And the Trump administration has never argued this as such.

Quote, I think it's dangerous to even suggest that a legally obtained and valid birth certificate could be viewed as quote-unquote fake without a much clearer statement from the federal government to that effect, Picasso advised.

In Trump's recent travel bans, they have specifically mentioned the availability of fabricated birth certificates in certain countries.

And this whole claim about trans people's visas being revoked because of applications of misrepresentation is contradicted by the State Department, which said last year, "...currently valid U.S.

visas issued prior to the effective date of this guidance bearing a sex that differs from the visa holder's sex as defined in the executive order will remain valid through its expiration date."

The visa holder does not need to apply for a new visa with an amended sex marker until the current visa expires, unquote.

So the first half of this article covers what I argue are gross misrepresentations of State Department visa policy.

The second half of the article speculates on how this misrepresentation could be enforced by ICE.