West Philly LGBTQ+ asylum shelter, a national rarity, is grappling with Trump’s immigration crackdown
By Emily Neil
Published August 4, 2025
Since 2022, Asylum Pride House in West Philadelphia has supported LGBTQ+ asylum seekers with housing and a range of legal, health care and employment services.
It’s the only organization of its kind in the nation.
Victoria Sirois founded the organization after seeing a need for it while working at a national resettlement agency.
“A lot of case managers … were coming to me, knowing that I had been doing a lot of DEI training around working with LGBTQ populations, being that it’s my community,” she said. “They were coming, being like, ‘Our clients are being kicked out of the shelters. We don’t really know where to go. They don’t have family or friends. Where are the resources?’”
Sirois, who is also the director of Asylum Pride House, said LGBTQ+ immigrants face multiple challenges and obstacles that are unique to their identities.
“One of the most prominent issues is the lack of access to support networks, and so whether that’s family members or friends or other immigrant communities, because a lot of our folks are fearful of sharing why they’re seeking asylum, or even just, you know, their identity, whether they’re gay, trans, nonbinary, that really deters folks from reaching out,” she said. “Even if they do have connections here, they just don’t feel safe. And so that was a real reason why this organization was so important to start was because those connections are really not there.”
A 2022 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found that LGBTQ+ asylum seekers and refugees require targeted resources. The study concluded that more research and data are needed to better understand LGBTQ+ immigrants’ experiences and needs, and analyze patterns of persecution and migration around the globe.
Data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees shows that at the end of 2024, there were more than 42 million refugees worldwide, and more than 8 million asylum seekers.
But the number of people within those groups who are LGBTQ+, and/or are fleeing persecution because of their identity, is unknown, the Williams Institute report found.
Cathryn Miller-Wilson, executive director of HIAS Pennsylvania, which serves low-income immigrants throughout the state, said that a number of their clients seeking asylum were persecuted because they are LGBTQ+, and in some cases could have faced the death penalty in their home countries.
