The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced this week that Gerardo del Valle, a video journalist with ProPublica, has been nominated for two News & Documentary Emmy Awards together with colleagues from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.
“El camino correcto,” directed, filmed and edited by del Valle and produced together with Perla Trevizo, in partnership with the Tribune and Univision, is nominated in the outstanding feature story in Spanish category. The film, which has an English-language version, “The Right Way,” follows the struggles of the Pabón family, which fled Venezuela nearly three years ago to seek asylum in the United States under a fast-changing immigration system.
The family arrived in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico — across the border from El Paso, Texas — on Dec. 1, 2022, following a six-month journey across seven countries and thousands of miles. They’d left their homeland at a time when thousands of Venezuelans were making their way north with the hopes of being able to enter and remain in the United States. But by the time the Pabóns arrived, the U.S. had implemented policies that made it harder for immigrants, including Venezuelans, to enter the country. They were required to use an app called CBP One to make an appointment to enter the U.S. and later seek asylum. In El Paso, there were about 150 appointments available a day. Suddenly, the Pabóns found themselves stranded with countless other tired and frustrated migrants in a city of 1.5 million that lacked the resources to provide for the staggering number of new arrivals.
The film, which was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick, also involved the work of Mauricio Rodríguez Pons, Lisa Riordan Seville, Almudena Toral, Zahira Torres and Ginger Thompson.
Del Valle was also nominated for the outstanding emerging journalist category with a portfolio of film projects from the previous year, including “The Right Way” and “Del Rio, Texas: How a Race for Sheriff Became a Referendum on Immigration,” also co-produced with Trevizo and co-published in partnership with the Tribune and Univision.
The winners of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards will be announced in June. See a list of all the nominees.
