For the first time since 2019, more Americans sought refugee status in Canada in the first half of 2025 than were filed in all of 2024, new statistics show from Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board. These 245 applications, while a tiny fraction of the approximately 55,000 total, are more than last year's 204 filings.
Lawyers in the two nations report that a large number of the new complaints are being filed by transgender people. One Arizona trans woman and a mother suing on behalf of her trans child informed Reuters they were seeking to escape increasingly inhospitable US policies relating to gender-affirming care, military service, bathrooms, and athletic participation.
To gain asylum, applicants must demonstrate there is no place safe for them in the US a tall order, since Canada tends to view the US as an operative democracy. Nevertheless, Canada's refugee panel has introduced new background materials such as Human Rights Watch reports on LGBTQ+ situations to review these delicate cases.
Most asylum-seekers entering Canada from the US under the Safe Third Country Agreement are forced to claim protection in the first safe country they arrive in, resulting in many being sent back.
At the same time, Canada is discussing more stringent immigration laws under the proposed new Strong Borders Act, which would limit asylum claims on a timing basis and by method of entry. Critics claim this could discredit merit and legal safeguards.
While tiny in absolute numbers, the recent surge in US refugee claims indicates increasingly entrenched apprehensions among trans people about increasing hostility and decreasing legal safeguards within their own country. It also shows how international systems of refugees are responding to new patterns of migration particularly when political choices and social movements touch even historically secure states.
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