It wasn’t the first caravan of desperate Central American refugees that made its way to the US border, but the late 2018 march was the first with a visible LGBT+ presence. Facing discrimination from their fellow migrants, some 80 LGBT+ people had banded together for support and protection. Soon after they were the first to reach the US-Mexico frontier in Tijuana, seven couples from among them held a group wedding.
Many of the refugees were from Honduras where violence and impunity are endemic for large swathes of the population. Homophobia aggravates the levels of violence, as two 2017 reports, one by Amnesty International and the other by Human Rights Watch, make clear. “In a couple of years in the neighbourhood I lived in, four transgender people and three gay men were murdered,” explains Jose Cortes who now lives in San Diego, California. “I knew I had to get out.”