United States Citizenship and Immigration Services is updating its policy manual to reflect the fact that there are only two biological sexes as the Trump administration works to remove the prevalence of gender ideology from the federal government.
In a statement published Wednesday, USCIS announced that it had updated its policy manual in an effort to comply with a Jan. 20 executive order signed by President Donald Trump titled “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” which made it the official policy of the federal government to recognize two biological sexes.
“There are only two sexes — male and female,” said U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin. “President Trump promised the American people a revolution of common sense, and that includes making sure that the policy of the U.S. government agrees with simple biological reality.”
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McLaughlin asserted that “proper management” of the U.S. immigration system “is a matter of national security, not a place to promote and coddle an ideology that permanently harms children and robs women of their dignity, safety, and well-being.”
A policy alert published Wednesday elaborates on the implications of the updates to the policy manual. It noted that the USCIS has traditionally required benefit requestors to choose between male or female “for purposes of its forms and associated secure documents.” The alert criticized changes made to USCIS policy under the Biden administration.
“In April 2024, USCIS added another option, a gender identity marker of ‘X,'” the policy alert stated.
Changes made to the policy manual under the Trump administration involve the replacement of references to “gender” with the term “sex” and the removal of a subheading titled “Validity of Marriage in Cases Involving Transgender Persons” as well as its “associated paragraph.”
While the changes made to the USCIS policy manual place a high emphasis on the importance of recognizing biological sex, the policy alert stresses that the agency will not deny people benefits if they select a gender that does not align with their biological sex as designated on their birth certificate or leave the gender field blank when requesting benefits.
When issuing changes to the policy manual last year, the Biden administration cited concerns about “significant barriers for requestors who do not identify” as either male or female and “administrative challenges for USCIS when we receive birth certificates or other official government-issued documents with a gender other than M or F.”
Other federal agencies have made similar moves in response to Trump’s order. Within a week after Trump took office, the Social Security Administration removed instructions outlining steps required to “change sex identification on a social security card.”
In an announcement published in February, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that it was “restoring the concept of biological truth in federal government” and establishing a definition of sex in its policies as someone’s “immutable biological classification as either male or female.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
