HI, CaliforniaBill,
If you had not deleted the media you might have been able to plug in your iPhone and let the import complete. Not entirely sure about that, but in any event it's a moot question now.
You should be able to reimport the unedited clips from your iPhone if the clips still reside there. You will not be able to recover your editing, however, because those clips are gone. If they won't import directly into iMovie, try importing into the Photos app or onto your desktop with the Image Capture app. Or, you can transfer the clips via AirDrop.
To try to recover your editing, see if the clips exist in the iMovie Backups folder for your library. To get to the iMovie Backups folder, follow this file path from the Finder menu:
Go/Home/Library/Containers/com.apple.iMovieApp/Data/Library/Caches/iMovieBackups
When you get there you will see a list of previous backups of your iMovie library. Click on one dated just before you deleted the clips. iMovie will open in that library. Navigate to your projects browser (where your projects are displayed as icons) and see if your projects are intact with the edited, though not completely imported, clips.
Another possibility is to use your Time Machine backup, if you have one, to restore your iMovie app to a point in time immediately preceding the deletion of the clips. Restore it to a different location than your present iMovie app or you will overwrite the present app.
-- Rich
