When an armed man burst into a pizza restaurant in Washington DC to investigate a baseless conspiracy theory, it was the final straw for Bethany Quinn.
Quinn’s friends often took their children to eat at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, which gunman Edgar Maddison Welch wrongly believed was the home of a Satanic child sex cult involving Hillary Clinton. The terrifying incident in her hometown in 2016 made Quinn start planning her escape from the US.
It was six years before she finally boarded a flight from Washington to Amsterdam to start a new life in the Netherlands, convinced that Donald Trump would win re-election and be back in the White House. When that became a reality two years later, Quinn set up her own agency to help other Americans do what she did.
The name is a blunt reflection of the emergency that she sees unfolding back home: GTFO Tours, or Get The F**k Out. Quinn told The i Paper: “I think there’s this idea of the American dream, this idea of the US as a really tolerant land of opportunity, but the big thing is, it’s a lie.
“You can have a nice life in the US, you can have a nice community, but you’re never really safe. Once you have moved out of the US, there are so many things you realise are really messed up that you have to suppress to get through the day.”
Quinn is far from alone. In Trump’s second term in office, record numbers of Americans are leaving the US. In 2025, the US experienced something it hadn’t since the Great Depression: negative net immigration. According to the Brookings Institution think-tank, the US lost 150,000 people in 2025 and that number is expected to increase in 2026.
A significant driver of the change has been Trump’s harsh policy towards migrants, including essentially closing the Southern border with Mexico and deporting 675,000 people in 2025. Another 2.2 million migrants “self-deported”, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security.
As for American citizens, many simply cannot stand to live under a Trump regime that feels hostile to people who are not white, straight and Christian. Marci Shore, an expert on fascism, moved to Canada in 2024 and is now teaching at the University of Toronto. Shore said that by September 2015, before Trump took office the first time, she was “already very nervous”.
“I felt things in the States reminiscent of the 1930s in Europe, and I saw postmodern forms of fascism emerging that I only recognised so early because I had been following what was happening in Russia and Ukraine.”
By July 2024, with Trump’s second victory months away, Shore moved her family to Toronto, where she feels calmer and safer. She told The i Paper: “Now when I’m in the US, I feel the self-censorship, the extent to which people who understand very well the evil going on around them are growing quiet and putting their heads down.”
Rather than shame, Shore said that she “acutely” feels a responsibility for her former country. “During the first Trump administration, when I saw those kids being wrenched away from their parents at the US-Mexican border, I thought, ‘That’s on me as well’. That’s our tax money paying for this. Those kids will never be okay again, and we are all implicated. We have failed to prevent this.
“I’ve run out of words to express not only my rage and disgust, but also my frustration with my own lack of efficacy.”
Marci Shore: ‘I felt things in the US reminiscent of the 1930s in Europe, and I saw postmodern forms of fascism emerging’ (Photo: Cheppel Volodymyr)Trump’s second victory a ‘breaking point’
Hannah Edwards, 34, left her home in North Carolina in March last year as a direct result of Trump winning the 2024 election. She settled in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, with her husband and two children aged three and two, where she runs her own brand strategy and design studio.
Edwards called the election her “breaking point” and said Trump winning a second term had “caused us to re-evaluate everything about America”.
She said: “Trump is all about Trump. Everything he does is self-serving. He never takes accountability, and he has exploited the American system to personally benefit in every possible way.
“He breaks rules and ignores consequences. He will harm anyone or anything to make money or get something he wants… For the promise of personal gain, he has literally sold out the American people.”
Living in the Netherlands, Edwards’s life is “so much more relaxed”, and she says she has even lost weight. She says that she and her husband “felt nervous all the time” in the US, about personal safety, healthcare and unhealthy food.
America has long been in decline because it runs on the “exploitation and ownership of human beings in one form or another”, she added. “It’s the same principle every time, that a person is worth whatever can be extracted from them, and the people doing the extracting are insulated from the cost.”
Asked to sum up her feelings about America, Edwards said: “Grief.”
Hannah Edwards left her home in North Carolina in March last year as a direct result of Trump winning the 2024 election (Photo: Monika Kolacz)‘The new American dream: get the hell out’
Social media is awash with videos of other Americans describing why they left the US. On TikTok, a user called Nope Brigade, who describes themselves as an activist and sociologist, said they moved to Canada with their partner because they couldn’t bear being in their home country any more.
The couple are visiting for six months until they can establish a more permanent solution. “This process has been one of tremendous loss,” they said. “I’m an artist, and I donated art supplies I’ve been carrying around since I was a teenager. I’m no longer a gun owner, which was an important way I felt safe and empowered in this violent f***ing country.
“I shouldn’t have to do this. I shouldn’t have to flee just to be safe, but I don’t see anybody fighting for trans people.”
On YouTube, a retired American who vlogs as Last Flight Out discussed in detail why he was leaving the US and “never coming back”. In a 15-minute video, he said the “American dream” of building a better life for your family had disappeared over the past 30 years due to billionaires taking control and the extreme political division.
“America is done, it’s over, it’s time to leave,” he says. “I see America as a very angry, divided and bitter place”. Another one of Last Flight Out’s videos is titled: “The new American dream: get the hell out”.
‘Every time Trump does something crazy we get new clients’
Bethany Quinn founded GTFO Tours with Jana Sanchez, a former PR executive who ran for Congress in Texas before moving to the Netherlands last year. Since the agency’s launch in March 2025, they have helped more than 600 people looking to relocate, some through one-off conversations and others with ongoing assistance.
Quinn said that their clients were “mostly Democrats”, but there were a few disaffected Republicans, too. “One of my favourite groups of folks are women in their fifties and sixties who have a bunch of money saved up, they are close to retirement, and they don’t want to deal with the craziness,” she said. “They are looking for their next big adventure.”
Another group is families with neurodivergent or non-binary children: under the Trump administration, his Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr has claimed he will find a “cure” for autism by September, a pledge that has alarmed parents and the scientific community.
Minneapolis residents took to the streets in protest after Renée Nicole Good, a mother of three, was shot dead in her car by an ICE agent (Photo: Octavio Jones/AFP via Getty)“Every time Trump does something crazy, we get new clients,” Quinn said, adding that the ICE agent killings of Renée Nicole Good and Alex Pretti during the unrest over the agency’s raids in Minneapolis caused a significant spike in inquiries. “A lot of people thought they could stay in America, and they wouldn’t face the threat of death due to their privilege. When Renée Nicole Good was killed, they realised these were the risks we’re talking about.”
Popular destinations for US emigrants include Spain and Portugal, as they have digital nomad visas which make it easier to move there. Quinn is a big fan of the Netherlands due to the fact that most people speak English, and the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty only requires finding a place to live and putting $4,500 in a business bank account to get a visa.
The Netherlands has a better work-life balance and, compared to the US, the cost of living is lower, Quinn said. There is good public transport, and people can easily walk around most major cities, unlike in their American equivalents.
Quinn, at least, has no plans to return to America. She recently married a Dutchman and sighs and pauses when asked about her feelings towards America.
“It’s sadness, it’s nostalgia,” she said. “It’s really tough because I think the US is such a lie and it indoctrinates people to believe so many things that are not true.”
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