This is Lady, 23. She left Honduras at a moment where she did not have time to think about the decision. She was forced to leave Honduras from one day to the next. She told me she couldn’t process anything, she just had to flee. Her partner was killed and soon after “I was told that if I didn’t leave the country, they would kill me.” She’s been with the caravan since the start. “We walked a lot, and have endured hunger, sun, cold, rain, and we slept on sidewalks.” She says the caravan was more difficult and humiliating for LGBTQ+ folks. “When we asked for a ‘ride’ in the street, the trucks full of migrants would pass by, and they would throw water on our faces and insult us.” She said there were also times when a driver would pick them up and throw them off their vehicles a few just blocks later.
This is Synclaire. She went to a historically Black college. So did he. Their sexual assault case was a disaster. For Splinter.
This is María Teresa Rivera. In 2011 she was arrested in El Salvador. She was accused of having an abortion and sentenced to 40 years in prison on the charge of “aggravated homicide.” Rivera claims she had a miscarriage and did not even know she was pregnant. Attorneys were able to free her, but not before she served four and a half years of her sentence. She fled the country when a prosecutor appealed the judge’s decision to a higher court.
On March 20 2017, the Swedish Migration Agency granted Rivera and her 12-year-old son political asylum. She is believed to be the first person in the world to be granted asylum for abortion persecution. For Splinter
“I’m a single mom of two. It was either food and diapers for my kids or DACA.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on September 5, 2017 that the administration was rescinding DACA. But the government would allow a small portion of the almost 800,000 DACA recipients—beneficiaries whose benefits expire between September 5, 2017, and March 5, 2018—to renew their authorizations.
Organizers say one of the barriers holding people back from submitting requests to renew DACA is the $495 application fee.
This is Kevin, 25, on the left wearing red. Erick, 23, is on the right. Erick is from Honduras and moved to Guatemala for Kevin. They found each other and fell in love on Facebook. “We’ve been together for two years and seven months, thanks to God,” Kevin told me. They joined the caravan near Guatemala and walked alongside each other everyday for a month. “We walked together all the way here,” Kevin told me. “This experience united us more as human beings, we supported each other, gave each other a hand, and encouraged each other to keep going,” said Kevin, as he and Erick stood in line to apply for asylum.