July 23, 2025 10:14 AM UTC

Deporting Abuelito: Gabe Evans' Life Story Is A Big Fat Lie

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday’s bombshell report from Colorado Newsline’s Chase Woodruff disclosed immigration records that upend freshman GOP Rep. Gabe Evans’ biography as he has represented it to voters during his brief career in elected office. Evans, a staunch defender of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign who helped Trump spread wildly exaggerated stories about Aurora, Colorado on the campaign trail in 2024, has always maintained that his immigrant grandfather obtained his American citizenship “the legal way,” which included service in the military during World War II. But as it turns out, 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 short, Gabe Evans’ grandfather met all the criteria to be summarily deported in 2025 with Evans’ full support. Evans has made statements recently in support of deporting migrants who are only accused and not yet convicted of any crime, and Evans supported the Laken Riley Act to deport migrants convicted of much less serious offenses than burglary. Responding to this very large discrepancy in Evans’ identity politics-driven approach to the issue of immigration, his staff dug the hole even deeper:

In the weeks preceding publication of this story, Evans appeared to acknowledge or accept the assertion that his grandfather had entered the country unlawfully in at least two interviews. His office could not point to any examples of similar disclosures during the 2024 election or before. Delanie Bomar, his spokesperson, first claimed that Evans had been “very consistent” and “clear about his family’s story,” but subsequently said his past comments may have been “confusing.”

“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,” [Pols emphasis] Bomar wrote in an email.

After Evans aide Delanie Bomar sent this, Newsline reports that the office stopped responding to follow-up questions. The admission that Evans’ grandfather’s immigration to the United States was not “100% perfectly legal” is of course a huge problem for Evans, who has used his grandfather’s story countless times as a foil to defend himself against accusations of hypocrisy for supporting a far-right anti-immigrant agenda. There’s just no way to get around the reality that under Trump’s immigration policy, which Evans fully supports, Cuauhtemoc Chavez would fall into one of the categories that Evans has said repeatedly deserve to be deported.

Faced with this crushing blow to Evans’ origin story, Evans’ office did the smart thing and stopped talking. But later yesterday afternoon, Colorado Public Radio’s Caitlyn Kim caught up with Evans himself, whereupon Evans resumed digging where his staff had left off:

“Everything that we just talked about, you have criminal backgrounds, you’re causing problems in the community, guess what? There’s not a place here in the United States.”

…With regards to the arrest mentioned on his grandfather’s form, Evans focused on the fact that authorities did eventually grant him citizenship.

“This is something that happened 80 years ago,” Evans said. “I spent 10 years as a cop. You know that every single case is different in its own unique individual and the facts of that case, and nothing here abrogates what we’ve already talked about, which was that the authorities at the time looked at the totality of the circumstances. [Pols emphasis] He joined the military, he served honorably, he gained his citizenship.”

This past weekend, the Colorado Sun reported that the percentage of arrests by ICE in Colorado of convicted criminals has plummeted, only partly offset by an increase in arrests of immigrants with pending cases. Gabe publicly pushed back on that story by highlighting the fact that arrests with pending cases had increased. There is nothing to suggest that the Trump administration is looking at the “totality of circumstances” in these cases to distinguish between more or less deserving deportees. Gabe Evans has defended the administration’s targets and tactics at almost every step–and in the exception of the letters he sent asking for a focus on criminals, which doesn’t appear to have made any difference on the ground, Evans’ grandfather would still be a target.

Especially since they’re deporting veterans too.

Is Evans guilty of his grandfather’s crimes? Of course not. Does this story expose generational hypocrisy and betrayal that strike at the heart of the one asset Evans possesses to win over swing voters in Colorado’s most Latino congressional district–his own biography?

You bet it does. At this point, Gabe Evans has nothing left but Trump’s coattails.