February 17, 2026 02:26 PM UTC

Murder, Schmurder: Gabe Evans Waves Off ICE Killings in Minnesota

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• by: Colorado Pols

In order to make an omelette, it’s necessary to break a few eggs.

Congressman Gabe Evans (R-Ft. Lupton) would extend that analogy to immigration enforcement. In order to protect this country from scary immigrants, you might have to murder a few Americans in the process. 

This is basically what Evans said during a Feb. 10 tele-townhall event in comments that came on the heels of a House oversight hearing in which Evans failed to back up his boasts that he planned to “grill ICE” on how some federal agents conducted immigration enforcement raids.

EVANS: I asked that question earlier today: How do we reduce the amount of ICE agents in the communities? You reverse the sanctuary policies by which local jails are not allowed to coordinate with ice to get known drug dealers and bad guys. You know, put them into ICE detention in a controlled jail setting.

So it’s always tragic when a U.S. Citizen loses their life, but we have to have a holistic conversation on how do we keep our communities safe [Pols emphasis] from things like the overdose death rates that have killed 400,000 Americans. We’re also having, again, oversight over law enforcement. 

Sure, it’s sad that innocent Americans were murdered, but how else can we continue to detain 5-year-old immigrants?

This is pretty gross even for Gabe Evans, who has demonstrated time and again throughout his first term in Congress that he’ll twist himself in knots in order to defend the Trump administration on any and every issue.

Evans has been claiming since before he was sworn-in to Congress that the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies are targeting “gangsters, not grandmas.” This statement has been proven false again and again, yet Evans has not budged on his talking points. Evans continues to claim that news reports showing most people in ICE custody have no criminal record are false because…well, because he says so. In June 2025, Evans went so far as to claim that he had personally checked out every ICE arrest in Colorado and found that 100% of them were for perfectly good reasons.

Evans repeated a variation of this horseshit in an interview with right-wing radio host Ryan Schuiling the day after last week’s ICE hearings in Congress:

EVANS: A lot of folks probably saw the headline that said only 14% of people in ICE custody have been convicted or been charged with violent crimes. Well, the devil’s in the details. If you go look at what is considered a non-violent crime — that includes things like human trafficking, drug dealing, theft, producing or distributing child porn…so when you include non-violent crimes like human trafficking and selling drugs, driving drunk, manufacturing and distributing child porn, then all of a sudden the numbers go up to about 60% of the people that are in ICE custody have some sort of non-violent crime like the ones that we just talked about…

…So it’s about 60% [of people in ICE custody] have criminal charges or pending criminal charges. About 30% have that final order of removal by an immigration judge. And only about 10% of the people in ICE custody don’t have either of those two…there’s a threat analysis or a flight risk analysis that’s done that says, even though this individual doesn’t have any current or pending crimes and doesn’t have a final order of deportation, there’s still enough of a risk of flight or enough of a risk to the community that they need to be held. We’ve seen cases of individuals from Iran with known terrorist ties — [they] haven’t done anything bad in the United States, but we’re definitely not going to let a known terrorist from Iran loose in our community. [Pols emphasis]

This is a stunning admission. Sure, we have a lot of people in ICE custody who have done nothing wrong, but they MIGHT do something wrong eventually so let’s just keep them in jail. 

In short, this is the Gabe Evans immigration enforcement position: Don’t overreact to federal agents murdering American citizens because that is the price we have to pay for being able to keep innocent people in jail.

This, apparently, is how Gabe Evans plans to explain away voter anger about immigration enforcement overreach. Good luck with that in November.