Sentiments towards america could also be shifting amongst LGBTQ+ folks, a report printed Saturday reveals—with the change registering each at residence and overseas.
For many years, the U.S. was a main 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 government order that abruptly halted a major pathway for refugee resettlement—leaving 1000’s of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers displaced and weak.
One among them is Sophia, who had already left her residence nation earlier than studying that her pathway to a future within the U.S. had immediately closed.
Sophia’s youth was outlined by a local weather of concern. She felt suffocated by the expectations of her conservative household and terrified to stay authentically as a transgender girl in Jamaica, the place her identification was not acknowledged and he or she had no authorized protections.
“For me, specifically, as a trans girl—as a Black trans girl—I felt like I needed to all the time disguise myself,” Sophia, who requested to make use of a pseudonym for concern of harassment, tells TIME. “I felt unsafe, listening to all of the tales about different trans girls 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+ neighborhood, together with the repeal of the navy’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 12 months 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 world wide, 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 results had been rapid. The P-1 pathway was now not viable. Flights for greater than 10,000 refugees had been canceled in a single day. Over 22,000 refugees world wide had been left with out vital providers, together with entry to protected housing, in line with the Worldwide Rescue Committee.
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Left with out a path ahead, Sophia’s stopover in Brazil stretched into two years—and in that point, her views concerning the U.S. started to alter. She now not noticed it because the protected haven she as soon as thought it was.
“The U.S. was projected to me as a haven for queer folks, now it looks like a grave for queer folks,” Sophia says, pointing to latest anti-transgender laws and a rise in hate crimes in opposition to trans folks within the U.S.
Many LGBTQ+ people share her sentiments—and never simply these dwelling overseas.
Her expertise displays a broader shift documented by Rainbow Railroad. Its newest knowledge reveals that, for the primary time, an growing variety of LGBTQ+ residents are expressing issues about their future inside the U.S.
In its annual report, printed on World Refugee Day, the advocacy group revealed that it had obtained 20,215 direct requests for relocation help from queer and transgender folks in 2025—a 51% enhance 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 dwelling throughout the U.S.
In 2023, that determine was nearer to 13%.
“Our knowledge reveals that the disaster is escalating in a big manner,” a spokesperson for Rainbow Railroad tells TIME.
In earlier years, most requests for help from throughout 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+ neighborhood is “having a horrific time accessing their rights,” Chief Applications Officer at Rainbow Railroad Devon Matthews tells TIME.
Nowhere to go
Whereas the LGBTQ+ inhabitants that Rainbow Railroad works with 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 weak.
“With a purpose to be eligible for presidency resettlement, they must be refugees—they must have already fled their nation of nationality or nation of origin, which signifies that they’re already displaced,” Matthews says.
Bridget Crawford, director of Regulation and Coverage at Immigration Equality, says that many queer and trans refugees who’re fleeing violence and persecution on the premise of their gender identification or sexual orientation discover it best to relocate to a geographically proximal nation. However it’s usually “simply as unhealthy or worse than the nation they fled.”
Based on Human Rights Watch, a minimum of 67 international locations have nationwide legal guidelines criminalizing same-sex relations between consenting adults, and a minimum of 9 have criminalize types of gender expression.
“It is from the frying pan to the hearth—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 strategy to dissuade refugees and asylum seekers from coming to the U.S.
Based on the Middle for Immigration Research, greater than 233,000 refugees had been resettled via USRAP throughout the Biden Administration. As compared, from October 2025 till Could 2026, the U.S. accepted 6,668 refugees—and over 99% of these had been white South Africans, in line with authorities knowledge, most claiming race-related persecution of their residence nation fairly 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’d just about by no means misplaced a single LGBTQ+ asylum case—till final 12 months. Now, the losses appear inevitable whereas the wins are ever extra elusive.
“It was once that in case you had been an LGBTQ asylum seeker, you’d get asylum in america,” she says. “It was so simple, 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 protected haven it as soon as seemed 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 lots 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 can be 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 world wide have “third nation elimination” agreements with america, together with Canada, Honduras, Uganda, Belize, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic. However Wolf questions how protected these international locations truly 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 might be imprisoned for all times, whereas cases of what’s described as “aggravated homosexuality” could also be grounds for loss of life.
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 among my largest fears is that individuals will comply with self-deport—primarily agree to return to their nation of origin—as a result of the concern of a trans individual from El Salvador being despatched to Uganda is, in some cases, extra scary or extra harmful,” Wolf says.
“I might argue the entire ‘third international locations’ that they signed agreements with and are sending folks to are essentially 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 special American Dream
With pathways for resettlement in america dismantled, advocacy teams like Rainbow Railroad have as a substitute steered asylum seekers towards choices like Canada’s Authorities-Assisted Refugees program. It affords everlasting residency upon arrival, in addition to entry to healthcare, housing, and employment.
Terry-Kay Walker, a 38-year-old transgender girl, was relocated to Canada by Rainbow Railroad.
After touring from her native Jamaica to Colombia, her asylum utility was accepted in January 2025 to resettle in America. She was ready for her flight date when Trump’s government order was issued. Stranded in Colombia and unable to talk Spanish, Walker struggled to pay for hire or groceries. Later that 12 months she was cleared to relocate to Canada.
Regardless of the “disappointment” she describes concerning her canceled resettlement alternative in America, Walker says it’s “for one of the best.” If she had come to america, she says she would have been nervous by the Trump Administration’s escalating anti-trans insurance policies—notably the rising variety of states limiting transgender folks’s capacity to get hold of identification paperwork that mirror their gender identification.
However with the best uncertainties and fears now behind her, she says: “Mentally and bodily, I’m doing manner higher.”
For Walker, having a solution is best than dwelling in limbo. Sophia remains 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 technique of trying to resettle to Canada.
Years in the past, Sophia noticed the U.S. as a refuge. At the moment, she is getting ready to construct her future some place else.
