LGBTQ asylum seekers from the U.S. are being rejected in the Netherlands because there is insufficient evidence that they are in danger in the United States. Photo courtesy of the European Commission.
Dozens of Americans sought asylum in the Netherlands in 2025, with Dutch reports confirming 76 total applications filed during the year. Early 2025 figures showed 20 applications in the first three months alone, already exceeding prior annual totals. About half of the early applicants were transgender.
Under the 1951 Refugee Convention and Dutch law, asylum requires a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, a category that can include LGBTQ identity.
The Dutch asylum system grants protection to LGBTQ individuals from countries where persecution is documented and state-sanctioned. LGBTQ people from Iraq and Afghanistan are classified as “groups at risk,” meaning limited evidence is sufficient to establish a risk of persecution.
For example, Iran’s Islamic Penal Code criminalizes all freely agreed same-sex relations, with penalties ranging from 100 lashes to execution, and Human Rights Watch has documented that Iranian authorities routinely use those provisions to arrest, detain, torture, and prosecute gay and transgender individuals.
Across the 76 countries that criminalize same-sex relations, five of which impose the death penalty, LGBTQ asylum applications in Europe have surged.
The contrast with the American cases is legally and factually significant. The United States is generally classified as a safe country of origin, which sets a high bar for American applicants.
Dutch authorities have stated that U.S. transgender applicants do not qualify for special treatment unless they can demonstrate persecution or an extreme breakdown of state protection. Most applications have been rejected.
The best-documented case is Veronica Clifford-Carlos, a 28-year-old visual artist from California. Reuters reported that her application was rejected by August 20, 2025, and that she subsequently filed the first known Dutch legal asylum appeal by a transgender American.
Her stated grounds were death threats tied to her gender identity and the broader policy climate under the Trump administration.
She was not a member of the military, but LGBTQ rights organizations cite U.S. military policies requiring personnel to serve in their birth gender, with corresponding uniform and hair standards, as well as the military no longer funding sexual transition procedures, as examples of a hostile climate in the United States worthy of an asylum claim.
The U.S. is considered a safe country for LGBTQ individuals because there are no anti-LGBTQ laws.
No U.S. law criminalizes gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender identity. Same-sex marriage has been a constitutional right since the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, and the decriminalization of same-sex conduct nationwide under Lawrence v. Texas in 2003 remains in force.
Legislation passed at the state level in recent years governs sex-based classification in specific government-administered settings.
Sports competitions are organized by biological sex, bathroom access in public buildings follows biological sex, and some states do not fund gender-transition procedures for minors through government programs and restrict or prohibit such procedures for minors regardless of payment source. None of these laws prohibit any activity on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
LGBTQ Americans have the same access to healthcare as any other citizen. No hospital may turn away a patient on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
No state has enacted a blanket prohibition on gender-transition surgery for consenting adults paying privately. Where restrictions exist, they are limited to government funding decisions.
Certain state Medicaid programs or federal insurance plans may decline to cover procedures they classify as elective, or restrictions may apply within specific institutional systems such as military healthcare.
These are coverage distinctions, not denials of care, and they parallel the way government insurance programs treat other elective procedures across the general population.
Transgender individuals are not banned from military service. They may enlist and serve, subject to the same standards applied to all service members.
Personnel serve according to biological sex, and individuals on certain medications, including cross-sex hormones, are subject to the same medical fitness evaluations that apply to any soldier on medication affecting combat readiness. These are force-wide standards, not identity-specific prohibitions.
LGBTQ individuals retain full civil and legal rights and access to courts. Internal relocation within the United States is also available, a factor Dutch immigration authorities explicitly cited in rejecting American asylum claims.
The Dutch court that rejected the Clifford-Carlos application ruled that exclusion from a sports category or a military classification “may be unpleasant and horrible, but it’s not seen as persecution in the eyes of Dutch immigration officials.”
Under the 1951 Refugee Convention, persecution requires a well-founded fear of serious harm from the state or groups the state cannot control, a standard met in countries where same-sex conduct is punishable by imprisonment or execution, but not in the United States.
An ironic twist to this story is that liberals hate ICE detention centers, which they mistakenly call “concentration camps” or “death camps,” although their purpose is simply processing for deportation.
Americans arriving in the Netherlands enter the standard asylum process, registering at Ter Apel, a small village in the northeastern Netherlands, which hosts the country’s main asylum reception center before transfer to COA reception centers. These centers are essentially the Dutch equivalent of ICE detention centers.
Americans arriving in the Netherlands enter the standard asylum process, registering at Ter Apel, a small village in the northeastern Netherlands that hosts the country’s main asylum reception center, before transfer to COA reception centers. These centers are essentially the Dutch equivalent of ICE detention centers.
Like all state-funded programs, they have been criticized for overcrowded conditions. A Dutch court fined the asylum agency over overcrowding at Ter Apel.
Once enough Americans have been sent to these detention centers, liberals in the United States will take to the streets with signs reading “Ban Dutch Asylum” and “Dutch Asylum is Hitler.”
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