US ‘Welcome Corps’ Helps Resettle LGBTQ+ Refugees Fleeing Crackdowns Against Gay People

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Cabrel Ngounou’s life in Cameroon quickly unraveled after neighbors caught the teenager with his boyfriend. A crowd surrounded his boyfriend’s house and beat him. When Ngounou’s family learned of the relationship, they kicked him out. He fled — alone and with little money — on a dangerous, four-year journey through at least five countries. He was sexually assaulted in a Libyan prison, harassed in Tunisia, and tried unsuccessfully to take a boat to Europe.
“The worst thing was that they caught us. So it was not easy for my family,” Ngounou said. “My sisters told me I needed to get out of the house because my place was not there. So that’s what really pushed me to leave my country.”
Ngounou’s troubles gained attention after he joined a protest outside the U.N. refugee agency’s office in Tunisia. Eventually, he arrived in the United States, landing in San Francisco in March.
Ngounou joined a growing number of LGBTQ+ individuals accepted into the Welcome Corps, which launched last year and pairs groups of Americans with newly arrived refugees. So far, the resettlement program has connected 3,500 sponsors with 1,800 refugees, and many more want to help: 100,000 people have applied to become sponsors.
President Joe Biden has sought to rebuild the refugee programs that Donald Trump largely dismantled during his presidency, working to streamline the process of screening and placing people in the U.S. New refugee resettlement sites have opened across the country, and on Tuesday, the Biden administration announced that it resettled 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024, the largest number in more than three decades.
In contrast, Trump has pledged to bar refugees from Gaza, reinstate his Muslim ban, and impose “ideological screening” for all immigrants if he regains the presidency. He and running mate JD Vance are laying the groundwork for their goal of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants by amplifying false claims, such as the accusation that Haitians granted temporary protected status to remain in the U.S. legally are eating pets in Ohio.
Under Biden, two human rights officials in the State Department were tasked last year with identifying refugees who face persecution due to their sexual orientation or human rights advocacy.
“LGBTQ refugees are forced to flee their homes due to persecution and violence, just like other people,” said Jeremy Haldeman, deputy executive director of the Community Sponsorship Hub, which implements the Welcome Corps on behalf of the State Department. “But they are particularly vulnerable because they’re coming from places where their identities are criminalized and they are at risk of imprisonment or even death.”
More than 60 countries have passed anti-LGBTQ laws, and thousands have fled the Middle East and Africa seeking asylum in Europe. In April, Uganda’s constitutional court upheld an anti-gay law that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”
“There are just a lot of people who are really at risk and are not safe in their country, and they’re usually not safe in the neighboring or regional countries either,” said Kathryn Hampton, senior adviser for U.S. Strategy at Rainbow Railroad, which helps LGBTQI+ people facing persecution.
The demand for assistance far outstrips capacity: Of more than 15,000 requests for help in 2023, the nonprofit helped resettle just 23 refugees through the Welcome Corps program in cities as large as Houston and towns as small as Arlington, Vermont. It aims to resettle 50 refugees this year.
“So, we have a lot of urgency as an organization to find and create new pathways that LGBTQI+ people can access to find safety,” Hampton said.
Another refugee in the program, Julieth Luna Garcia, is a transgender woman from El Salvador who settled in Chicago. Speaking through a translator, the 31-year-old Garcia described how she suffered abuse from her family due to her trans identity and couldn’t legally access gender-affirming care until she arrived in the United States.
“I lived with constant fear, especially at night. I didn’t like to go out. I was really scared that someone would find me alone and do something,” Garcia said. Since arriving in February, she has found housing and a job as a home health aide and hopes to study to become a lawyer. “Here, I’m not scared to say who I am. I’m not scared to tell anyone,” she said.
Perhaps the biggest change for Garcia has been starting hormone treatments: “To see myself in the mirror and see these changes, I can’t really explain it, but it’s really big. It’s an emotional and exciting thing, something I thought I would never experience.”
Welcome Corps sponsors are expected to help refugees adjust for at least three months after their arrival. Garcia mentioned that the five volunteers helped her “adapt to a new life with a little less difficulty” by accessing benefits, obtaining a work permit, and enrolling in English classes.
Ngounou recalled how his sponsors — a team of seven that included a lesbian couple, Anne Raeff and Lori Ostlund — hosted him and connected him with LGBTQ resources and a work training program. They also served as his tour guides to gay life, taking him to the historically gay Castro district, where Ngounou got his first glimpse of the huge rainbow Pride flag and stopped to read every plaque honoring famous LGBTQ figures.
“Cabrel was just very, very moved by that. We all started crying,” Raeff recalled. “I know that feeling, like when we were young, going into a gay bar and feeling a sense of freedom and community. That was the only place where you could be open.”
Now the 19-year-old Ngounou works in a coffee shop and takes college courses, with the goal of becoming a social worker. He hopes the boyfriend he met in Tunisia can visit him in San Francisco and finds it hard to believe they can share their love openly.
“Here, I’m really me… I feel free,” he said with a laugh. “I feel free to have my boyfriend and walk with him in the street. I feel free to enjoy myself with him wherever we want. But in Tunisia or anywhere else, like in Cameroon, you have to hide those things.”