POV: Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie)

Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie) illuminates the plight of and the debate over the more than 11 million undocumented people in America today by focusing intently on one: 24-year-old Angy Rivera. She’s lived in this country since her mother, fleeing violence and hopeless poverty in Colombia, brought her at the age of four to New York. Unlike her siblings who were born here, Angy is not a citizen, and she has been coached since she first learned to talk to remain silent, to tell no one, lest she be found out, arrested and deported. But Angy, as a young woman, decided she had to talk. She wanted a pathway to citizenship, a chance to go to college. She became an activist and an advocate on behalf of young people like herself, carrying signs at rallies and launching an online advice column. She’s an eloquent voice for her cause and, by letting Mikaela Shwer film her daily life, also advances it by example, showing herself to be the antithesis of the ugly, politicized caricatures of undocumented immigrants. Now that she’s been allowed to attend John Jay college, she’s majoring in criminal justice. For a richly textured portrait of a young immigration activist whose experiences evoke millions of similar stories, a Peabody Award goes to POV: Don’t Tell Anyone (No Le Digas a Nadie).