Vowing to leave the country when your preferred presidential candidate loses is something of an American tradition, but that doesn’t typically translate into an actual international relocation. Yet recently in the Washington area, where the impact of Donald Trump’s second term is being felt acutely, some longtime residents are really doing it. “I’ve heard stories of people moving to Uruguay, Portugal, and Greece because of the current ideology,” says Russell Brazil, a real-estate agent with RLAH @properties. “In the past, I had stories of people claiming they would leave the country, but I’ve only seen this actually materialize in the current political environment.”
One local who agreed to discuss her decision—a global-health professional who lived in DC for 50 years—headed to Europe in early August. “My parents were Austrian Jews who fled to the US during World War II,” she said. “Everything about this administration reminds me of what my parents told me about what happened to them in the 1930s in Austria.”
Her family’s history both inspired and enabled her exit from the United States; people who are descended from Austrian victims of Nazi persecution are eligible for Austrian citizenship. The decision to leave America was significant—her husband can’t easily obtain foreign citizenship, so he’s still living in the couple’s Takoma Park home—but she has no regrets.
For the public-health expert, the gutting of USAID was the breaking point. “The first Trump administration was bad enough, and I knew the second time around would be even worse,” she says. “I love my community, my neighbors, my friends . . . [but] I was filled with terror before I left.”
Another recently departed Washingtonian we talked to is the daughter of immigrants—her father fled to Florida from Cuba before she was born. “I honestly don’t think the country today is the country he came to,” she says. Until recently, she worked as a museum professional. The high cost of living in this country already had her considering retirement elsewhere, and Trump-administration policies validated her plans, with things like his effort to abolish birthright citizenship encouraging her to leave sooner. She and her husband recently sold their DC home and found a rental in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Every time Trump signs a new executive order, she says, “I feel my decision is affirmed.”
Of course, things can change. For the public-health expert, this move probably isn’t permanent. She isn’t selling her house, and she’s planning to visit Washington in May and stay through the midterm elections. If Democrats make significant gains, she might consider returning stateside at least part-time. But right now she’s pretty pessimistic. While she still has hope that the climate can shift, “I don’t know if I will be alive to see the turnaround.”
This article appears in the November 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
