June 24, 2026 12:19 PM UTC

Gabe Evans: Just Accept My Lies!

• 0 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Republican Rep. Gabe Evans is America’s Most Vulnerable Incumbent™, and he’s definitely feeling the heat as voters prepare to select his General Election opponent on Tuesday.

Evans recently sat down for a rare interview with Denver7 reporter Colette Bordelon and bristled at a question about a lie he regularly tells relating to his family’s immigration history:

BORDELON: You mentioned the Dignity Act, and I know it’s difficult to compare different decades, of course, but based off that Colorado Newsline investigation into your grandfather’s history and how he came to this country, would your grandfather have been subject to deportation under the DIGNITY Act?

EVANS: So the Dignity Act says if you’ve been in the country pre-Biden, so that’s the first part, you have to show you’re in the county pre-Biden, you’re not on welfare, you don’t have a criminal background, you’re a security threat, you’re taking federal welfare, you’re willing to pay your back taxes. If we’re able to create this Dignities program, then you get a work permit. Not citizenship, not amnesty, not voting — you get a work permit, you have pay for it, a thousand dollars a year to pay for, but then you have that work permit you are now legal. And your employer also has the confidence that you are a legal employee here in the United States. Now you can pay taxes, now you can lawfully interact with the United States government, take care of your family, and work with your employer. And so under those standards, you know, that’s what we’re offering.

Obviously, my grandfather, that was 1930s. And so for me, as the only Hispanic in Congress… You know, part of me gets a little bit frustrated when this keeps coming up, that folks, you know, some folks that want to be detractors of mine are going to go back 90 years to try to go criticize the history of a World War II veteran who has two Purple Hearts that earned his citizenship in Patton’s 3rd Army…the motto, so he was part of the Fourth Armored Division. The motto of the Fourth Armored Division is, ‘By their deeds alone shall they be known.’

And so that is my grandfather’s story as an adult, by their deeds alone shall they be known. That’s how he earned his citizenship and I’m gonna continue telling that story because I’m proud of it. And if detractors wanted to detract about something that happened 90 years ago, well, you know what? I think that’s why we saw a lot of the Hispanic population shift in the 2024 election. [Pols emphasis]

Unfortunately, Bordelon did not ask a follow-up question and let Evans get away with his How dare you question my grandfather’s WWII bonafides distraction. That Evans’ grandfather Cuauhtemoc Chavez served in WWII and received two Purple Heart awards is not what is questionable here. The reason detractors are detracting is because of how Evans spins that tale into a story about immigrating the “legal way.”

Evans has told this story since his congressional campaign launch about his immigrant grandfather coming to the United States from Mexico and obtaining his American citizenship “the legal way,” which included service in the military during World War II. The real story, as Chase Woodruff of Colorado Newsline discovered last summer, is that Evans’ grandfather was in the country illegally for over 15 years, and along the way picked up a criminal arrest record for burglary charges:

In a 2022 statement to Spanish-language newspaper La Prensa de Colorado, Evans, then a first-time state House candidate, wrote that Cuauhtemoc had “acquir(ed) citizenship in 1943,” while serving in the Army. In fact, records show that he did not apply for naturalization until several years later, in 1946. The discrepancy is significant because Cuauhtemoc’s naturalization petition indicates that he was granted citizenship under a 1944 law that eliminated proof of “lawful entry” as a requirement for naturalization. [Pols emphasis]

Evans repeated the inaccurate timeline during his 2024 congressional campaign. He told the Berthoud Weekly Surveyor that it “took (Cuauhtemoc) 13 years to get his citizenship,” likening his wait to a story he’d heard on the campaign trail of a Colorado resident who “legally pursue(d) citizenship for 17 years.” But Cuauhtemoc affirmed twice — first on his 1941 AR-2 form and then on his 1946 petition for citizenship — that he had not previously applied for naturalization.

Under President Trump’s immigration policy, which Evans fully supports, Cuauhtemoc Chavez would almost certainly be facing deportation today. When Colorado Newsline published this story in July 2025, Evans’ spokesperson Delanie Bomar made a ridiculous effort to clarify her boss’s lies:

“In Hispanic culture, immigrating the ‘right way’ generally means working hard, contributing to their community, and not causing problems — not necessarily that something is 100% perfectly legal.”

That’s not what Evans was doing at the time, and in multiple interviews since then, he has continued to lie about his abuelo’s immigration history. Evans’ own relatives have called him out for his nonsense.

Last summer, Colorado Newsline spoke with Jennifer Chavez, Cuauhtemoc’s daughter and Evans’ aunt, who confirmed that Cuauhtemoc IMMIGRATED FROM MEXICO AT THE AGE OF FIVE. Chavez also found Evans’ yarn about a hardscrabble existence to be quite hilarious:

When asked about another line from Evans’ campaign announcement email — in which he said that his mother, Rebecca Chavez, “thought she would spend her whole life in a one-room hut with a dirt floor in Juarez, Mexico” — Jennifer Chavez burst out laughing.

“We were raised in a middle-class neighborhood in El Paso,” she said. “We went to Eastwood High School, which was predominantly Caucasian. … To this day, none of us are fluent in Spanish.” 

Gabe Evans could just, you know, stop telling this story about his grandfather’s immigration history. But lying about everything is basically the Gabe Evans brand at this point.