As US President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring people from updating the sex on their passports, Lisa Suhay took her daughter Mellow to a passport office, as they want her  to leave America before it becomes unbearable for transgenders. 

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Mellow, who is 21 years old, was taken to a passport office in Norfolk, Virginia, where they live.

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Trump signed an executive order, using a narrow definition of the sexes instead of a broader conception of gender. According to the order, a person is either a male or a female. 

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It also rejects the idea that someone can transition from the sex assigned at birth to another gender. 

Mellow's family wants her to be able to leave the country if things become unbearable for transgender people in the US. 

“If the worst was to come to worst and things were to threaten my life,” she said, “I would have some way out.”

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Mellow checked on the "male" box, even though that's different from her state-issued driver's license. 

“We had to swear an oath to the fact that the information that we presented was true, even if what we had to do was not truthful to ourselves,” Mellow said. “It was emotional because it was in a way lying to yourself.”

Mellow's mother said she is worried that her daughter might not be granted a passport or that it could create legal problems if her documents don't match or because she swore to something where she was not true. 

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Following Trump's order, seven people filed a federal lawsuit challenging the State Department's refusal to issue passports with accurate sex designations. 

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Massachusetts, and law firm Covington & Burling LLP, on behalf of those seven people. The complaint was filed in the federal District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

Under the ensuing Passport Policy, within 24 hours, the State Department began holding some passports and other relevant documents, submitted by the transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people who had applied to update the sex designation on their US passports. 

They further returned the documents and passports with their applications rejected and their newly-issued passport marked with their sex assigned at birth. 

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“I’ve lived virtually my entire adult life as a man. Everyone in my personal and professional life knows me as a man, and any stranger on the street who encountered me would view me as a man,” said Reid Solomon-Lane of North Adams, Massachusetts. 

“I thought that 18 years after transitioning, I would be able to live my life in safety and ease. Now, as a married father of three, Trump’s executive order and the ensuing passport policy have threatened that life of safety and ease. If my passport were to reflect a sex designation that is inconsistent with who I am, I would be forcibly outed every time I used my passport for travel or identification, causing potential risk to my safety and my family’s safety," Reid said. 

Earlier, the State Department permitted people to change the sex designation on their passports to be aligned with their gender identity. 

However, since Trump's new order, the department publicly announced that applications to obtain a sex designation consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth have been "suspended". 

(With inputs from agencies)