Photo: The Canadian Press

In this Nov. 2, 2018 photo, Honduran transgender Alexa Amaya, who part of a group of 50 or so LGBTQ migrants traveling with the migrant caravan hoping to reach the U.S. border, uses a compact to apply makeup while riding in the back of a flatbed truck to Sayula, Mexico.

Dozens of transgender women and gay men in the caravan moving through Mexico with hopes of seeking asylum in the United States have banded together for protection — not from the uncertainty of a journey fraught with danger from the gangs who prey on migrants but from their fellow travellers.

Fleeing violence and discrimination back home because of their gender identity or sexual orientation, these LGBTQ migrants have found the journey north to be just as threatening amid catcalls and even physical abuse.

"Sweet little thing!" ''Baby, where you going?" ''How much do you charge?" These all-too-familiar jeers are spewed at them as they make their way with the caravan of several thousand.

Loly Mendez, a 28-year-old who began transitioning to a woman in her native El Salvador, knows all too well the dangers her fellow transgender migrants faced back home: Her best friend, also a transgender woman, was murdered for doing the same.

Then Loly herself began getting threats — "that if my breasts were going to grow, they would cut them off," she said. They were always anonymously delivered, which only made her more fearful and finally drove her to flee.

"In my country there is violence, a lack of work and opportunities," said Loly, who like many of the transgender women in the group preferred using only her first name. "In the caravan there is also violence — against the LGBTQ community."

Loly linked up with the caravan in Tapachula, in southern Mexico, and hopes to work in the United States and save up to start a beauty products company — perhaps in Los Angeles or New York. It's something she has planned for a long time, all the way down to the business' logo, but she's never had the money.

"I am going to a country where I know I will achieve my dreams," Loly said, hopefully.

Reports are common in much of Central America of LGBTQ people being murdered, assaulted and discriminated against, due to their gender identity or sexual orientation.

But getting U.S. asylum is difficult even with proof someone has been the victim of persecution for being transgender, said Lynly Egyes, director of litigation at the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, California.

It often takes days or weeks for transgender immigrants to get a hearing before an asylum officer. If they are allowed to move forward in the process, many are traumatized and struggle to tell their story, Egyes said. They are also much less likely to be granted asylum without a lawyer.

"It is a horrifying process, and not everybody makes it through," she said.

Many of the migrants have said they joined the caravan because it offered safety in numbers. The 50 or so LGBTQ migrants travelling together, most of them in their 20s but some as young as 17 or as old as 60, say they, too, banded together for safety — a sort of caravan within the caravan.

Sticking out in their bright-colored clothing and makeup, the group has suffered verbal harassment, especially from men, and has been the victim of robbery and other aggressions. One recent day as they walked in a row on the highway to Isla, in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz, a group of fellow migrants passed by on a flatbed truck and showered them with water, oranges, rinds and other refuse.

Fearful of being attacked more violently or sexually assaulted, they stick by each other's sides 24 hours a day, walking and sleeping in a group and even using the buddy system for going to the bathroom.