He said he’d been living in San Diego, working odd jobs while he waited for his refugee claim to be processed. But his claim was denied and he was ordered deported late in 2015.

For about two months before he fled to Canada, Yussuf lived with family in Minneapolis. A friend there found a man willing to drive Yussuf to the border. Yussuf said he was convinced he had to flee the U.S. before he was deported. A return to Somalia, he said, would be a death sentence.

“Why I take this risk?” he asked. “(It) is because there was no humanity in the United States any longer because of the new administration.”

Fear is driving people to take desperate action, according to Maggie Yaboah, president of the 1,200-member Ghanaian Union of Manitoba, which often provides informal assistance to new arrivals.

Yaboah, who immigrated to Canada more than 30 years ago, said it used to be that one or two refugees a year arrived from Ghana. But since last fall, more than two dozen men have walked across the border into Manitoba.

She said many initially fled Ghana because they were gay and their sexual orientation made them a target of physical attacks and government persecution. They had gone to America first, believing they would be welcomed.