Dangers asylum seekers face take center stage in play premiering in Tucson

The dangers facing migrants waiting south of the U.S.-Mexico border, trying to request asylum “the right way,” come to life in a new play that opens Saturday in Tucson.

“The U.S. administration does not know, or does not want to know, the real conditions of those who are aspiring to have their case considered,” said Mexican playwright Hugo Salcedo, in WhatsApp messages written in Spanish.

Salcedo wrote the play, “2 Nogales,” after Teatro Dignidad and Coalición de Derechos Humanos commissioned him to write a documentary-style piece depicting migrants in Nogales, Sonora, waiting for their chance to request asylum.

Salcedo said he decided to embed himself at a Nogales, Sonora migrant-aid shelter, over the course of two week-long visits. The material he gathered, and the people he met, at Casa de la Misericordia shelter were indispensable to his play, Salcedo said.

“It was a very enriching experience without which I would not have been able to write ‘2 Nogales,’” he said.

Teatro Dignidad co-founder and actor Alba Jaramillo said it was an honor to have Salcedo take on this project, funded by the University of Arizona’s Confluence Center for Creative Inquiry.

“He is one of Mexico’s most important playwrights, who has typically focused on writing about immigration,” said Jaramillo, who is also co-director of the Immigration Law & Justice Network and provides legal services at Casa de la Misericordia.

The play “reframes the entire asylum narrative and gives a window of what is happening in our own borderland, at our own ports of entry,” Jaramillo said.

The play’s opening coincides with the one-year anniversary of the Biden Administration’s so-called "asylum ban," officially called the "Circumvention of Lawful Pathways" rule, which imposes punishments, such as bans on re-entry, for most asylum seekers who fail to use the CBP One application to secure an appointment to request asylum.

The play seeks to highlight the on-the-ground consequences of the policy, which advocates say is discriminatory and forces asylum seekers to wait for an appointment for months, in dangerous conditions south of the border.

Those who don’t speak one of the app’s three languages are excluded, and there are too few appointments to meet the massive demand, advocates say. Waiting migrants are easy targets for criminal groups, as well as for corrupt Mexican officials, and are increasingly victims of kidnapping, extortion, torture and rape, according to recent reports from multiple human rights organizations.

Asylum seekers sometimes decide it’s not worth the wait and resort to crossing between ports of entry to reach U.S. soil, where they can legally request asylum. But to get there, migrants often must use smuggling routes controlled by organized crime, aid workers on the border say.

“The CBP One app that right now is pretty much the only way asylum seekers can get through, and it is impossible to get an appointment,” Jaramillo said. “What you will see in the play is that it shows all the dangers of the journey (to the border), but also the dangers at the border wall.”

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The latest report on conditions for asylum seekers in northern Mexico, released Tuesday by Human Rights First, was based on interviews with more than 500 asylum seekers along the southern border, the majority of whom didn’t know about the CBP One application. The report urges the Biden Administration to maximize access to asylum at U.S. ports of entry, whether or not migrants use the CBP One application.

Salcedo won acclaim for his 1988 play, “El Viaje de los Cantores” — known as “The Crossing” in English — based on the true story of a group of migrants who suffocated in a train car while trying to reach Texas in 1987.

In the decades since, migrants face even greater dangers, Salcedo says, with the rise in powerful organized crime groups profiting from cross-border trafficking and extorting migrants. Migrants used to be primarily young men seeking work but today, entire families are fleeing for their lives, Salcedo said.

He’s concerned by the indifference of citizens in both the U.S. and Mexico to the plight of migrants, as well as “the racist mark in the daily actions of ordinary people, on both sides of the border, who despise the migrant community with false suspicions, unfounded fears and growing hatred,” he said.

The play features a fictional troupe of actors, who are less characters in the play than “vehicles for the narrative of the immigrants,” said Eva Zorrilla Tessler, director of 2 Nogales.

“It’s a testimonial play,” she said. “There is a direct contact with the audience because it’s like storytelling. There’s no fourth wall. You’re speaking directly to the audience, and the audience is part of the conversation.”

More Americans should be aware of the root causes of migration from Latin American countries and the United States’ historical role in destabilizing many of those countries, particularly El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, Zorrilla Tessler said.

“Start asking questions about the countries where those people are coming from. How did they come to be in such a disarray that they produce migrants?” she said.

Zorrilla Tessler said she hopes audiences leave the play with a sense of the humanity of the migrants whom she says are too often dehumanized in the media or used as political pawns by legislators.

“I hope that they understand that these people are human beings, and that you could be very well in their shoes,” she said.

Salcedo believes theater can be a powerful tool to inspire action.

While theater can lend visibility to critical political issues, he said, “the change of course is not done by the theater; it is done by the people.”

Opening night is Saturday at the Temple of Music and Art in downtown Tucson, and the play will continue through May 26. Tickets can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com.