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Air Force Technical Sergeant Alyx Aguiano
"This isn't just a fight for us," Technical Sgt. Alyx Anguiano told The Advocate. "It's a threat to every person who has served or is currently serving."
When Technical Sergeant Alyx Anguiano joined the U.S. Air Force in 2010, she was following a family legacy of service that stretched from World War II to Desert Storm. Over 15 years, the Texas native deployed to the Middle East, ran show-of-force operations against hostile nations, and even loaded munitions to escort Air Force One for Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, “several times,” she said. As an instructor, she trained roughly 500 of the Air Force’s 6,000 weapons specialists, instilling in them what she believed a leader should be.
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“I’ve always wanted to wear the uniform,” Anguiano, 34, told The Advocate. “I fully intended to continue serving this nation until my 20-year mark, and perhaps even beyond.”
Instead, after years of serving openly as a transgender woman and exceeding standards with the support of her commanders and peers, Anguiano now sits at home on forced administrative leave, stripped of her duties, facing involuntary separation, and watching the life she built teeter on the edge of collapse.
Related: Air Force rescinds early retirement approvals for transgender service members kicked out by Trump
Anguiano began her gender transition in 2016, shortly after Obama lifted the prior ban on open transgender service. By 2017, she was living openly and serving under female uniform standards, something she says made her a more effective leader. “I’ve been nothing but a more effective, stronger, and more capable noncommissioned officer because a massive burden was lifted from my shoulders,” she said.
That stability evaporated when Trump returned to the White House in January. Executive orders once again banned transgender service, forcing members like Anguiano back to “birth sex” standards for uniforms, grooming, and facilities, and then out of the military entirely.
Anguiano says her commander, unwilling to humiliate her, placed her on administrative absence. “I literally am not allowed to do my job,” she said. “My unit needs people, but I’m sitting at home.”
In May, the Air Force offered what seemed like a lifeline: early retirement under the Temporary Early Retirement Authority, or TERA, for those with 15 to 18 years of service.
“They told us on a Thursday and we had until the Friday of the following week to make a choice,” Anguiano said.
She and her wife agonized over the decision before accepting. Retiring would preserve benefits like Tricare coverage, critical for her family’s health needs, a pension, and access to services on military bases. It would also offer a degree of stability after a disruptive relocation that drained their savings.
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Her application was approved. Orders were issued for a December 1 retirement date. And she began out-processing, attending briefings, and preparing for civilian life.
Then, on August 4, the Air Force abruptly and quietly rescinded all previously approved retirement requests for trans airmen with 15 to 18 years of service, including Anguiano’s. The order, signed by Brian L. Scarlett, performing the duties of assistant secretary of the Air Force for manpower and reserve affairs, voided approval for service members with a retirement date granted under TERA. The directive cited Trump’s “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” policy, the same framework that’s been driving a systemwide purge of transgender service members since June.
The only paths forward: “voluntary” separation with enhanced separation pay, an option with fast-approaching or lapsed deadlines, or involuntary separation. For Anguiano, either route risked financial ruin.
Jay Brown, chief of staff at the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement to The Advocate, “This has nothing to do with military readiness. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake.”
Anguiano is not alone. The reversal hit decorated veterans like Master Sgt. Logan Ireland, who had also been approved for early retirement after 15 years of service, only to have the Air Force take it back. Speaking from experience, Ireland, who lives in Hawaii, where he’s stationed with his wife, told The Advocate, “One day you’re preparing for a dignified retirement; the next you’re being told you’re out, and not on your terms.”
Related: Meet the transgender Army lieutenant who is challenging Donald Trump’s military ban
Advocates call the move a targeted attack. “It’s unnecessary, deliberately cruel, and highly disruptive to individuals who would happily continue serving if they could,” Cathy Marcello, interim executive director of the Modern Military Association of America, told The Advocate after the initial announcement. The decision, she added, is “not considering merit or warfighting capability” and “does not make America stronger or safer.”
Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for LGBTQ Rights, told The Advocate that the administration’s actions were unconscionable. “The Air Force is breaking a direct commitment to service members who have already been granted early retirement,” Minter said. “This is a double betrayal: first forcing transgender service members to leave after promising them they could serve, and now rescinding their ability to obtain early retirement after granting it. The financial consequences are devastating and mean that service members who have devoted their lives to our country receive nothing.”
Asked how the reversal felt, Anguiano said, “It feels like betrayal. I have never felt so betrayed in my life. I feel discarded.”
For her, the fight is bigger than the roughly 30 transgender service members now in similar situations. “It’s a disgrace to every man, woman, or otherwise that wears the uniform. They just cherry-picked one thing about me that made me disqualified, after I followed all the regulations to the letter," she said, explaining that she worries the precedent won't stop with transgender troops.
“If we’re disposable like this, everybody is,” she added. “This isn’t just a fight for us. It’s a threat to every person who has served or is currently serving.”
Anguiano’s professional uncertainty is matched by personal strain. She and her wife bought a home at her current duty station, expecting she would finish her career there. Without Anguiano's paycheck and benefits, they could lose it. And because her family is in Texas and Arkansas—states she calls “not very friendly, at all, right now"—Anguiano feels they have nowhere safe to fall back.
Despite everything, Anguiano is grateful for her immediate chain of command and their continued support. Recalling her commander’s visible distress when delivering the news of her rescinded retirement, she said, “Nobody wanted this to happen. They know it’s wrong.”
That support has stood in sharp contrast to the treatment she’s received from some outside her unit. In the months since the ban’s return, Anguiano says she has been accused by strangers and online commentators of joining the Air Force solely to get gender-affirming care. Meanwhile, the military has given her and others in her situation no indication of what the separation process will look like. That uncertainty extends to timing: Based on what she’s been told informally, she could be forced out as early as October or November.
“Right now, I’m just being dragged along and reacting to each new development,” she said. “These are life-altering decisions, and we’re being forced to make them without enough information, without any good options.”
Currently, she is considering next steps outside the Air Force, including launching a multimedia business with her wife that would produce music, webcomics, and other creative projects. She is also weighing defense contracting work, using the skills and security clearances she built over her career, which she sees as a way to "contribute to the mission—if not in uniform, then alongside those who are." And in the meantime, she and her wife started a GoFundMe campaign to help with expenses in uncertain times.
While she waits for answers that may never come, Anguiano is determined to keep fighting. “If I fight for anything, it’s for my brothers and sisters in uniform,” she said. “Because if I’m considered disposable, then we all are.”
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