Transgender anti-Trump refugee returns to US after fearing death at Islamic asylum centre in EU

Despite claiming asylum to stay in Ter Apel, Arc has now returned to the United States.

Speaking to local media outlet Pow News about the Islamic asylum centre, the one-time asylum seeker said: "The situation I have in the US as a trans person, not good, right?

"But here, I will be hurt or killed. 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.

"You see these guys in yellow vests, they actually wear them because there are so many stabbings."

Arc, who is a software engineer, transitioned from male to female in 2012.

She changed the gender on her ID to female in 2013.

However, Arc's fears about the Ter Apel asylum centre appear to echo concerns expressed by charity groups and volunteers.

The Red Cross deemed Ter Apel dangerous, with volunteers admitting they felt "unsafe" at the site.

Staff temporarily suspended their work at the site after a series of stabbings and violent brawls.

The asylum centre houses around 2,000 migrants, including many from Eritrea, Somalia and Syria.

However, Arc already told The Guardian fleeing the US was "the dumbest thing" she has ever done.

In a Substack article written earlier this year, the 48-year-old added: "Leaving California showed me how I cannot leave California.

"I thought when I left that I was growing something new here in the Netherlands. But it is time to go. Long past, in fact."

Before Arc returned to the US, a friend was fundraising to pay for the cost of a new passport.

However, the software engineer is already complaining about the costs of groceries in the US.

"First time shopping in the US, and In-N-Out too," she wrote on Threads.

"America is really, really loud and overwhelming. And everything is so expensive.

"The Dutch complain about groceries being expensive, but good grief, San Francisco is a whole different experience."

In a subsequent post complaining about healthcare, Arc added: "I have my gripes with the Dutch healthcare system. And I know what I like about the American healthcare system.

"The ways in which the US system are bad are very, very bad. The ways in which the Dutch system are bad are 'bad,' but not the way the US is.

"I feel like healthcare is something humanity decided to just make worse on purpose because it seems like we know what we want and need from healthcare as a species."

Arc also waded in on the debate about whether trans athletes should compete in women's sports, writing: "Transphobia is quite overt."