The US Military Forced This Trans Woman Out. It Still Owes Her $66,000

Chloe Shapiro arrived in Seattle with $30 in her bank account and her two-door Honda Accord, filled with belongings like her father’s bibles to her National Guard uniform.

The arrival in Seattle was nothing like she planned. She’d expected to have enough money to begin anew. However, the military owes her tens of thousands of dollars.

She’s one of many trans military service members who decided to leave the military instead of trying to wait out the many legal challenges facing President Donald Trump’s trans military ban. She’s also part of a group of them who haven’t been paid for uprooting their careers in the service, the Washington Post reports.

“At 17 years old, I enlisted in the Texas Army National Guard. I’ve been wanting to join the military since I was a little kid in middle school,” she said. Shapiro planned to stay in the military for at least 20 years.

The Trump administration has offered trans troops severance checks calculated from their base pay and number of years of service. The Department of Defence said it would double their severance payouts if a soldier volunteered to go and then agreed not to apply for unemployment, according to the Post.

The Post reports that even though Shapiro did the paperwork, money didn’t arrive for months. She was officially discharged in February. And out of the $86,665.32 she was owed, she’s only been paid $20,000.

Shapiro told the paper that she had planned to use the severance money to move to Seattle from San Antonio and start a new life in a trans-friendly area. She wanted to use the money to get started and to enroll in college.

But for weeks she couldn’t pay for classes, and she couldn’t pay rent.

“I had my plan completely perfected,” Shapiro told a Seattle nonprofit worker, according to the paper. “If I had that money, everything would have landed where it needed to be.”

One-hundred phone calls to military officials got her nowhere. She recorded calls trying to find her money only for customer service operators to tell her that they could see the money listed, but didn’t know how to move it through.

No one could explain why she wasn’t being paid the severance.

The Post identified at least 12 transgender troops who haven’t received their severance pay. It notes that each military branch has different payment processes, so the total number is unclear. One service member is waiting for $130,000.

Another is waiting for $340,000.

During her time in the military, Shapiro earned promotions and won several awards. A former colleague told the Post that Shapiro was dedicated.

“She would do anything she could to figure out a way to take care of her soldiers,” he said.

In Seattle, Shapiro found some stability after months of using Seattle’s trans-friendly network of support of nonprofits and good Samaritans. She enrolled at Bellevue College with her GI Bill funding covering education, and a nonprofit put up funding for two months in a dorm.

Eventually, she contacted elected officials who pushed for an explanation by the military. In July, $10,000 dropped in her bank account.

She was then told by the Texas military’s inspector general that she should be given her severance in installments, but they couldn’t confirm a schedule for when those would begin.

In August, the Post reports, Shapiro called to see about the next check. Another $10,000 arrived days later.

“I came here to Seattle, pretty much with some pocket change and some hope and dreams, just so I can hopefully, you know, live my authentic life as Chloe Shapiro, and I can be safe,” she said. “At the end of the day, getting to walk through the city and not be treated like I’m some weirdo, I’m just a normal human being. It reminds me why I moved here and why Seattle is such a safe and loving and accepting city.”