President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said, this Thursday (24), that Defend the gender identity of federal deputy Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) and other transgender people is to defend Brazilian sovereignty. 
Lula asked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to issue a note showing the “non -conformity of Brazil with the interference of an embassy in the passport of a Brazilian”.
THE Deputy had his gender identity denied during the process of issuing a diplomatic visa to participate in an academic conference in the United States.
Yesterday (23), she met with Chancellor Mauro Vieira and today was with Lula during Meeting for sanction of bills about combating violence and protection of women’s rights at the Planalto Palace.
“Erica, what happened to you, in my opinion, is abominable,” Lula said at the meeting.
“You did not go to ask for sex change, you went to ask for a passport to take a trip to the United States. That’s what they should have given you. And to defend this is to defend Brazilian sovereignty. It’s the least we expect,” the president added.
Official mission
Erika Hilton was part of official mission authorized by the House of Representatives and should lecture on April 12 at the diversity and democracy panel, during Brazil Conference at Harvard & Mit 2025, along with other Brazilian authorities. After the incident, Hilton gave up the trip.
The federal deputy said she became a direct target of a transphobic policy of the US government and claimed that the act is configured in a diplomatic problem.
Documents gathered by the deputy’s team reveal that the US embassy in Brasilia deliberately registered Erika with maledisregarding your rectified birth certificate and your Brazilian passport attesting to your female gender.
In 2023, the same embassy had issued a visa to the deputy respecting his female identity. On January 20 of this year, US President Donald Tump issued Executive Order 14168, which requires federal departments to recognize the genre as an unchanging male-feminine binary and prohibits gender self-identification in federal documents such as passports.
Interference
THE President Lula provoked the House of Representatives and the Federal Senate to also send a statement to the United States Congress about the “interference” of the embassy in the documents of the Brazilian deputy And he stated that in Brazil, no American parliamentarian would be treated in this way.
“Who has the right to discuss what this woman is, is Brazil and she is, above all. It’s science. It’s not Trump’s decree. So, it’s important that you learn to get restless either,” he told parliamentarians who were at the ceremony at the Plateau.
“It has to have a protest from the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies for the House of Representatives, has to have a letter to the American Senate.”
“It is getting out of rest and saying clearly that we do not accept this. We will not do this with an Americana who wants to come here. We will only authorize or not seen. Say that you do not want to give the visa, is over. Now, what can not try to change what the person is,” added the president.
US government
In a statement, the American embassy in Brazil said the visa records are confidential and confirmed that only recognizes the male and female sexes“Considered immutable from birth.”
In a press interview after the meeting, Erika Hilton stated that President Lula’s position shows that trans women are not “abandoned and isolated.”
“The government is committed, worried, positioning itself. We will now wait for Itamaraty’s official position, but there was a very positive speech […] Saying, ‘The Brazilian government will speak up,’ “he said.
“The president used this moment to make a speech that makes me happy and that it hopes that we will continue to defend all women, working women, women on social networks, women in the countryside, indigenous women and also transsexual and transvestite women,” he said, in reference to sanctioned bills, which deal with women’s rights protection.
