Sentiments towards the US could also be shifting amongst LGBTQ+ folks, a report printed Saturday exhibits—with the change registering each at house and overseas.
For many years, the U.S. was a number one vacation spot for these fleeing persecution, providing refuge annually to extra folks than all different international locations mixed. However on the primary day of his second time period, President Donald Trump signed an govt order that halted a main pathway for refugee resettlement—leaving 1000’s of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers displaced and susceptible.
One in all them is Sophia, who had already left her house nation earlier than studying that her path to a future within the U.S. had all of a sudden closed.
Sophia’s youth was outlined by a local weather of worry. She felt suffocated by the expectations of her conservative household and terrified to reside authentically as a transgender lady in Jamaica, the place her identification was not acknowledged and he or she had no authorized protections.
“For me, specifically, as a trans lady—as a Black trans lady—I felt like I needed to all the time conceal myself,” Sophia, who requested to make use of a pseudonym for worry of harassment, tells TIME. “I felt unsafe, listening to all of the tales about different trans ladies in Jamaica being killed or assaulted.”
On the time, the U.S. was within the midst of launching coverage efforts to acknowledge the rights of the LGBTQ+ group, together with the repeal of the army’s controversial “Don’t Ask Don’t Inform” coverage in 2011, a landmark Supreme Court docket marriage equality ruling in 2015, and a push towards banning conversion remedy for minors initiated that very same yr by former President Barack Obama. It appeared to Sophia like an inclusive place the place she may, lastly, cease being afraid and discover peace.
With assist from Rainbow Railroad, a New York- and Toronto-based group that creates pathways to security for at-risk LGBTQ+ folks all over the world, Sophia relocated to Brazil in 2024. She utilized for asylum via the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) Precedence 1 (P-1) referral pathway for at-risk refugees.
Then, Trump abruptly suspended this system on Jan. 20, 2025.
The consequences have been quick. The P-1 pathway was now not viable. Flights for greater than 10,000 refugees have been canceled in a single day. Over 22,000 refugees all over the world have been left with out important providers, together with entry to secure housing, in response to the Worldwide Rescue Committee.
Learn extra: What’s Within the $70 Billion Invoice Funding Immigration Enforcement
Left and not using a path ahead, Sophia’s stopover in Brazil stretched into two years—and in that point, her views concerning the U.S. started to vary.
“The U.S. was projected to me as a haven for queer folks, now it appears like a grave for queer folks,” Sophia says, pointing to latest anti-transgender laws and an increase in hate crimes in opposition to trans folks.
Many LGBTQ+ people share her perspective—and never simply these residing overseas.
Her expertise displays a broader shift documented by Rainbow Railroad: Its newest information exhibits that, for the primary time, an growing variety of LGBTQ+ residents are expressing considerations about their future contained in the U.S.
In its annual report, printed on World Refugee Day, the advocacy group revealed that it had acquired 20,215 direct requests for relocation help from queer and transgender folks in 2025—a 51% improve year-over-year and the best within the group’s 20-year historical past.
And for the primary time, 30.9% of these requests got here from people residing inside the U.S. In 2023, that determine was nearer to 13%.
“Our information exhibits that the disaster is escalating in a big means,” a spokesperson for Rainbow Railroad tells TIME.
In earlier years, most requests for help from inside the U.S. got here from worldwide asylum seekers who had already been settled there. However the overwhelming majority (88%) of the requests in 2025 got here from Americans who felt unsafe inside their very own borders. Many referenced a perceived anti-LGBTQ+ agenda from the Trump Administration.
“As soon as a fascinating vacation spot” for LGBTQ+ migrants, the U.S. “now tops the record of nations the place residents, and notably trans folks, are asking for assist,” the report reads.
The LGBTQ+ group is “having a horrific time accessing their rights,” Rainbow Railroad Chief Applications Officer Devon Matthews tells TIME.
Nowhere to go
Whereas the LGBTQ+ inhabitants is only a fraction of these impacted by Trump’s full overhaul of the nation’s asylum and refugee methods, they’re amongst these most susceptible.
“With a view to be eligible for presidency resettlement, they must be refugees—they must have already fled their nation of nationality or nation of origin, which implies that they’re already displaced,” Matthews says.
Bridget Crawford, director of Legislation and Coverage at Immigration Equality, says that many queer and trans refugees who’re fleeing violence and persecution on the idea of their gender identification or sexual orientation discover it best to relocate to a geographically proximal nation. However it’s usually “simply as dangerous or worse than the nation they fled.”
In accordance with Human Rights Watch, at the least 67 international locations have nationwide legal guidelines criminalizing same-sex relations between consenting adults, and at the least 9 have criminalize types of gender expression.
“It is from the frying pan to the fireplace—to a different hearth, to a different,” Crawford says.
Learn extra: The U.S. Has Turned Its Again on LGBTQ Asylum Seekers
She sees the “gutting of the whole refugee and asylum system” as a deliberate solution to dissuade refugees and asylum seekers from coming to the U.S.
In accordance with the Heart for Immigration Research, greater than 233,000 refugees have been resettled via USRAP in the course of the Biden Administration. As compared, from October 2025 till Could 2026, the U.S. accepted 6,668 refugees—and over 99% of these have been white South Africans, in response to authorities information, most claiming race-related discrimination of their house nation quite than danger associated to sexual orientation or gender identification.
Rebekah Wolf, an lawyer with the American Immigration Council, has been offering free authorized providers to asylum seekers for over a decade. She tells TIME that she had nearly by no means misplaced a single LGBTQ+ asylum case—till final yr. Now, the losses appear inevitable whereas the wins are ever extra elusive.
“It was once that when you have been an LGBTQ asylum seeker, you’d get asylum in the US,” she says. “It was so easy, and that is simply not the case anymore.”
Even asylum seekers already within the nation more and more query whether or not it’s nonetheless the secure haven it as soon as gave the impression to be. A rising concern is the specter of detention or deportation.
Wolf tells TIME that the Trump Administration’s immigration enforcement brokers have detained a lot of her queer and trans purchasers and tried to deport a number of of them to what’s referred to as “third international locations”—international locations which are neither a migrant’s nation of origin nor final place of residence—regardless of safety orders from judges.
As of June 2026, 30 international locations all over the world have “third nation elimination” agreements with the US, together with Canada, Honduras, Uganda, Belize, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic. However Wolf questions how secure these international locations really are, particularly when the federal government is planning to ship LGBTQ+ people there.
In Uganda, for instance, people who have interaction in same-sex acts could be imprisoned for all times, whereas situations of what’s described as “aggravated homosexuality” could also be grounds for demise.
But Wolf says that she has a number of LGBTQ+ purchasers who’re vulnerable to being deported there by the Trump Administration’s third-country elimination insurance policies.
“One in all my greatest fears is that folks will comply with self-deport—primarily agree to return to their nation of origin—as a result of the worry of a trans particular person from El Salvador being despatched to Uganda is, in some situations, extra scary or extra harmful,” Wolf says.
“I’d argue the entire ‘third international locations’ that they signed agreements with and are sending folks to are basically unsafe for LGBTQ+ folks,” Crawford observes. “And a few of them are worse than the international locations that the folks fled to start with.”
A distinct American Dream
With pathways for resettlement in the US dismantled, advocacy teams like Rainbow Railroad have as an alternative steered asylum seekers towards choices like Canada’s Authorities-Assisted Refugees program. It presents everlasting residency upon arrival, in addition to entry to well being care, housing, and employment.
Terry-Kay Walker, a 38-year-old transgender lady, was relocated to Canada by Rainbow Railroad.
After touring from her native Jamaica to Colombia, her asylum software was authorised in January 2025 to resettle in America. She was ready for her flight date when Trump’s govt order was issued. Stranded in Colombia and unable to talk Spanish, Walker struggled to pay for lease or groceries. Later that yr she was cleared to relocate to Canada.
Regardless of the “disappointment” she describes relating to her canceled resettlement alternative in America, Walker says it’s “for the most effective.” If she had come to the US, she says she would have been apprehensive by the Trump Administration’s escalating anti-trans insurance policies—notably the rising variety of states limiting transgender folks’s capability to acquire identification paperwork that replicate their gender identification.
However with the best uncertainties and fears now behind her, she says: “Mentally and bodily, I’m doing means higher.”
For Walker, having a solution is best than residing in limbo. Sophia continues to be ready. Like 1000’s of different displaced refugees affected by the suspension of USRAP, she spent months questioning whether or not the longer term she had imagined for herself would ever materialize. Now she is within the means of making an attempt to resettle to Canada.
Years in the past, Sophia noticed the U.S. as a refuge. As we speak, she is making ready to construct her future elsewhere.
