The National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences announced ProPublica and partners as nominees for two News & Documentary Emmy Awards. 

“Estatus: Venezolano,” a documentary directed by ProPublica’s Mauricio Rodríguez Pons in partnership with FRONTLINE FEATURES, an effort from the PBS investigative documentary series FRONTLINE, is nominated in the outstanding news feature in Spanish category. The film follows a Venezuelan family in Florida trying to stay together — and stay in the U.S. legally — as they navigate rapidly shifting immigration policy decisions.  

The documentary is set in and around Doral, Florida — home to the largest Venezuelan diaspora in the U.S. It follows Yineska, a Venezuelan mother who had been living in the United States for nearly two years, and her family as their hopes and fears rise and fall with the changes to their immigration status and their efforts to find ways to avoid deportation back to the country they fled. “How do you start from scratch with a situation like this?” Yineska says. “We are afraid of what might happen there when we arrive.”

To Rodríguez Pons, Yineska and her family represent the many Venezuelans who’ve come to the U.S. seeking safety and opportunity — and, in many ways, his own immigration story. 

“Sobreviviendo al CECOT,” a collaboration between ProPublica, The Texas Tribune, Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News, is nominated in the outstanding investigative news coverage in Spanish category. The short film, which has an English-language version, “Surviving CECOT,” tells the story of three Venezuelan men — Juan José Ramos Ramos, Andry Blanco Bonilla and Wilmer Vega Sandia — who were branded by the U.S. government as Tren de Aragua gang members and deported by the Trump administration to CECOT, a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. All three men said they had no connection to Tren de Aragua and were not gang members, and in U.S. government data ProPublica obtained, none was flagged as having a criminal conviction or pending charges. 

The winners of the 46th annual News & Documentary Emmy Awards will be announced in May. See a list of all the nominees.