April 06, 2026 12:39 PM UTC

Grandmas, Not Gangsters: New Data Shows Same Immigration Crackdown Story

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• by: Colorado Pols

It has been more than a year since the Trump administration began its widespread immigration crackdown, promising the largest deportation campaign in American history. Trump’s deportation push was billed as a necessary action in order to remove undocumented immigrant criminals who were causing some sort of invented havoc across the country — with Aurora, Colorado often used one of Trump’s prime examples.

The number of deportation officers in Colorado has more than doubled since Trump moved back into the White House in January 2025, and federal officials are looking at opening new detention facilities in the state. While those efforts led to 4,750 deportations in Colorado last year — a fourfold increase from 2024 — the story behind those arrests have been much the same: We’re largely deporting undocumented immigrants who were of no risk to Coloradans.

As Seth Klamann reports for The Denver Post:

The share of arrestees who have criminal convictions has plummeted, the data shows, while deportations of those with no criminal history have surged, despite federal officials’ claims that they’re pursuing the “worst of the worst.” [Pols emphasis] The Denver Post analyzed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data that was obtained and processed by the Data Deportation Project. It included arrests in the full year ending Jan. 20, the anniversary of the start of Trump’s second term.

Of the thousands arrested in the state, 78% had a listed date of departure — indicating that they’d already been removed from the United States.

The people arrested in Colorado came from more than 80 countries spread across five continents. Two thousand and one came from Mexico and 782 from Venezuela. Among others, 316 were from Guatemala, 22 from China, a dozen from Afghanistan and four from the United Kingdom.

They ranged in age from a 91-year-old Mexican man deported last year to two children who were, at most, a year old; one of them has also been deported, the data shows. At least 121 people were younger than 18. Ten of the arrestees were Iranians, all arrested within days of the United States’ first bombing campaign against that country in June. [Pols emphasis]

Congressman Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton) has repeated the same mantra since just after he was elected in November 2024, claiming that federal immigration enforcement efforts would target “gangsters, not grandmas.” Evans has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled-down on this narrative even as data showed that this was completely untrue. When news outlets report on immigration arrest and deportation numbers, Evans responds by using Trump’s go-to claim of “fake news.”

Evans continues to stick to this message no matter how often the data proves otherwise. As Klamann continues, the Biden Administration actually did a MUCH better job of focusing on criminal undocumented immigrants:

In the 12 months prior to Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, 1,202 immigrants without legal status were arrested in Colorado. More than 58% of them had prior criminal convictions, while nearly 24% more had pending charges. Only 17.7% had no criminal history.

Looking at the Trump-era arrests, those trends flipped. Of the 4,750 people arrested over the ensuing 12 months, the largest group — 38% — had no criminal history, compared to nearly 35% with prior convictions and 26% with pending charges.

The response from the Trump administration to this latest information is also familiar:

In an unsigned statement Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security said the data — which was obtained by the data project through public records requests — “is not accurate.” An unidentified media office representative did not say what part of the data was incorrect and did not directly address questions about The Post’s findings. [Pols emphasis]

Oh, well, that settles it [insert eye roll].

[Side note: What is it with these Republican spokespeople — similar to Gabe Evans’ spox last week — refusing to give their names?]

The pace of arrests and deportations in the United States continues to increase, though numbers have fallen off in the Denver area since last summer. What hasn’t changed is the approach.

Immigration enforcement actions are likely taking some gangsters off the streets…but only when they have trouble finding enough grandmas.