June 12, 2025 01:36 PM UTC

Gabe Evans Finally Flinches On "Gangsters Not Grandmas"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Freshman Republican Rep. Gabe Evans campaigned for office in full agreement with Donald Trump’s promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants from the country, subsidizing Trump’s wildly exaggerated claims that the city of Aurora had been “overrun” by migrant gangs and appearing with Trump at his rally last October near Denver International Airport promised that his nationwide purge of undocumented immigrants would begin there. Since Trump commenced after taking office making good on his promises and then some, Evans has remained a steadfast supporter, insisting that Trump’s objective was to deport “gangsters, not grandmas.”

Just after taking office in January, Evans told constituents not to worry, due process would prevail for everybody–including undocumented immigrants:

In a Jan. 23 interview on KOA radio, host Marty Lenz asked Evans if he was concerned that arrests of immigrants could have “collateral damage [that could] potentially hurt some people in your community that get caught up in this?”

“You know, I think that’s why we have the justice system that we have in the United States,” responded Evans. “You know, we used to say, ‘As cops, you know, whatever we do stands for a night. But in the morning, when the lawyers and the judges all come back to work and review everything that we do, we’re the bottom of the totem pole.’ And anything that I do as a police officer can be overruled by the judges. The lawyers can petition that whatever I did be overruled…”

In May, Evans was asked in a softball interview in the Colorado Springs Gazette whether he had heard about any deportations that concerned him. Answer: no.

Q: But what about people being deported without due process or without clear ties to gangs?

A: Whenever we go out into the community, I ask people, “Have you heard of anybody that’s been deported, and do you think there’s problems associated with how that process occurred?” We have not yet identified one case in Colorado where somebody was deported in a manner that brought concern…” [Pols emphasis]

CO Rep. Gabe Evans is among the signers.

As my colleagues have reported, many of those detained in Colorado do not have criminal records. https://t.co/Up2Ln65UMfhttps://t.co/yjpzSa94ng#copolitics https://t.co/Psf8OXrGki

— Caitlyn Kim (@caitlynkim) June 12, 2025

Evans must not have been looking very hard, since as Colorado Public Radio reported in April:

[M]any of those detained in Colorado are without criminal records. [Pols emphasis] It’s impossible to know exactly how many, since Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, only releases names in select cases. But the number of detentions of people with clean or old criminal records includes two Mauritanians seeking asylum after claiming to have been enslaved or beaten by police in their home country and a Mexican man who has worked for the same market off of Tower Road since 2016 with not so much as a traffic ticket. Supporters say it also includes an outspoken activist from Mexico with an old and minor criminal history. She was later named as one of the most influential people in the United States but remains a thorn in the side for immigration authorities.

But despite Evans’ assurances just a few weeks ago that there was not “one case” that had “brought concern,” The Hill reports that behind the scenes, as it turns out Evans has some concerns:

In a letter to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acting Director Todd Lyons on Wednesday, [six] members led by Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) — the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Conference in the House GOP — sought information about the status of migrants facing criminal charges who are on ICE’s docket and about the criminal status of those who have already been deported…

“While we do agree that we are a nation of laws—and that all who crossed our borders illegally are subject to those laws—there are levels of priority that must be considered when it comes to immigration enforcement. Every minute that we spend pursuing an individual with a clean record is a minute less that we dedicate to apprehending terrorists or cartel operatives,” the members said.

The letter comes as the administration has ramped up the deportation of migrants not accused of violent offenses as it aims to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise of mass deportations — despite Republicans previously saying the effort would start by targeting violent criminals.

Evans is one of the six Hispanic Republicans who signed this letter–another back-channel attempt to address after the fact a problem Evans won’t admit exists on camera, just like Evans’ request to the U.S. Senate to undo cuts to renewable energy tax credits that Evans voted for in the budget package. After months of defending without question every action taken by the Trump administration, this letter is a political “insurance policy” for Evans to point back to in the increasingly likely event that Trump’s mass deportation campaign becomes a liability in the midterm elections.

Evans doesn’t need data from ICE to know that immigration raids have expanded beyond rounding up known criminals to meet the administration’s ambitious and arbitrary quota of 3,000 arrests each day. All he needs to do is read the local news. We assume he has, along with the polls that show him sinking like a stone, and the covering of Evans’ own ass that should have been the overriding rule in January for America’s Most Vulnerable Freshman™ is finally getting underway.

Way too late.