Nina Chaubal (born 1992) is the co-founder and former Director of Operations at Trans Lifeline,[1][2] the first transgender suicide hotline to exist in the United States[3][4][5] and Canada.
[6][7] As a leading LGBTQ+ activist and trans woman,[8] when Chaubal was held in immigration detention, the story made national headlines in publications such as The New York Times[9] and Chicagoist.
[1] Chaubal earned her H1B, a visa for foreign workers employed in the U.S. in order to work at Google as a software engineer, a position she accepted in January 2013.
[18] On August 30, 2015, Chaubal was among the Happy Hippie Foundation representatives to speak onstage and introduce Miley Cyrus at the MTV Video Music Awards.
[21] In April 2016, Chaubal appeared on the panel "Suicidality Among Transgender Populations: New Directions in Understanding and Treatment" at the American Association of Suicidology Conference.
[22] In January 2018, Trans Lifeline's Board of Directors dismissed Chaubal and Martela, after an internal audit discovered that they had misdirected over $350,000 of the organization's funds.
[23] On Dec. 28, 2016, while driving from California to her home in Chicago through a checkpoint in Wellton, Arizona, Chaubal was stopped and detained by ICE agents, who asked for her passport.
[13] In January 2018, a Trans Lifeline internal review involving independent legal and financial professionals revealed that Chaubal and Martela had made $353,703 of unauthorized purchases for personal benefit and side projects.