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CalMatters, Evident Media and Bellingcat’s collaborative documentary, “Operation Return to Sender” has been nominated in the 2026 News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences awards the best in American news and documentary programming, and honored “Operation Return to Sender” with a nomination in the “Outstanding Editing: News” category. Winners will be announced in May.
“This deeply-reported CalMatters investigation becomes richly powerful through the partnership with Evident and Bellingcat,” said Kristen Go, editor-in-chief of CalMatters. “The meshing of on-the-ground reporting and exhaustive examination with bold visual storytelling and gripping video editing reached and resonated with a wide audience.”
“Being nominated alongside CalMatters and Bellingcat is a testament to the power of collaborative nonprofit journalism,” said Kevin Clancy, executive creative director and co-founder of Evident Media. “The Emmy nomination for Outstanding Editing reflects not only deep reporting, but a cohesive and engaging piece from start to finish — and underscores Evident’s mission to bring viewers on a journey of discovery.”
Congratulations to all the nominees, and special congratulations to our partners at Evident Media, for receiving five total nominations and our partners at Bellingcat, for receiving six total nominations for this year’s News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
Operation Return to Sender
The powerful documentary is CalMatters’ first venture in film, thanks to our partnership with Evident and Bellingcat. Our investigation exposed the aggressive tactics and misinformation behind what would become the blueprint for the mass deportation campaigns carried out by immigration forces across American cities. It focused on the claims of Border Patrol sector chief Gregory Bovino, who would go on to lead the raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis and beyond.
The investigation debunked claims about Bovino’s first “proof of concept” raid in Kern County. He asserted the operation was “highly targeted” against immigrants with criminal records. However, the Department of Homeland Security’s own data, obtained for this report, revealed that Border Patrol had no prior knowledge of any criminal or immigration history for 77 of the 78 individuals detained during the three-day raid.
Following publication and an ACLU lawsuit, a federal court issued a preliminary injunction forbidding the Border Patrol from conducting warrantless immigration stops throughout a wide swath of California and included in its ruling reporting from CalMatters.
Last week, CalMatters reported that the same federal court ruled that Border Patrol agents continued making illegal stops and arrests after she ordered them to quit.
In a tersely worded decision, the judge wrote that agents had “again detained people without reasonable suspicion,” relying on broad assumptions about day laborers instead of specific evidence of immigration violations.
Tracking Border Patrol
In July 2025, CalMatters, Evident and Bellingcat mapped and analyzed videos of the immigration raids across Los Angeles in a new short documentary, “Masked, Armed, Forceful.”
Less than a year later, CalMatters, Evident and Bellingcat collaborated again to launch another documentary, “Agents of Chaos.” The project tracked the Border Patrol agents who have been roving from city to city for more than past year, documenting their tactics on the ground and through mountains of footage, since their first proof-of-concept raid in Bakersfield in January 2025.
Our investigation showed that, immigration agents engaged in a pattern of force and questionable detention, aggressive tactics that courts have said likely violated the constitution, as they moved from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and then Chicago and Minneapolis.
