What a swing House district in Colorado shows about Republicans’ immigration fallout in the midterms

GREELEY, Colo (AP) — Like many Donald Trump voters, Miranda Niedermeier is not opposed to immigration enforcement. She was heartened by initial moves from the Republican president in his second term that she saw as targeting immigrants who were in the United States illegally and had committed crimes.

But Niedermeier, 35, has steadily become disillusioned with Trump. Never more so than in recent weeks, when federal immigration officers killed two U.S. citizens during Trump’scrackdownin Minneapolis.

“In the beginning, they were getting criminals, but now they’re tearing people out of immigration proceedings, looking for the tiniest traffic infraction” to deport someone, said Niedermeier. She said she is horrified because the administration’s approach is not Christian.

“It shouldn’t be life and death,” she said. “We’re not a Third World country. What the hell is going on?”

Trump’s immigration drive in Minnesota, and the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, has resonated across the farms, oil and gas rigs, and shopping centers of Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, a swing seat stretching northeast from Denver. The monthlong turmoil in Minnesota has reinforced the political views of some in the U.S. House district while making others reconsider their own.

“He should cool it on immigration,” said Edgar Cautle, a 30-year-old Mexican American oil field worker who said he is a Trump fan but is increasingly distressed by images of immigration agents detaining children and splitting families apart. “It’s making people not like him.”

Republican congressman wants ICE to focus on criminals

If such sentiments hold until the fall, that could imperil House Republicans who won their seats by narrow margins and could jeopardize the GOP’s full control of political power in Washington.

Even a small shift is significant in the 8th District, where Republican Gabe Evans was elected to Congress in 2024 by 2,449 votes out of more than 333,000 cast. His seat is one of the Democrats’ top targets as they push to retake the House in November.

Evans is a former police officer whose mother is Mexican American. He has urged the administration to focus on deporting criminals rather than people in the country illegally who are otherwise obeying the law — as Evans puts it, “gangbangers, not grandmas.”

In an interview, Evans said he is worried about the assertion by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that it can search homes with just an administrative warrant rather than one signed by a judge. He said he looks forward to questioning Department of Homeland Security officials during an upcoming House hearing.

Still, Evans blamed Democrats for the Minneapolis standoff and the broader impression that ICE is out of control.

“One side wants to fan the flames and equivocate in this space because they want an issue to run on in November,” he said.

He noted that ICE has stepped lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations aimed at criminals rather than the local industries that rely on immigrant workers.

“We have big meatpacking plants, we have big dairies, we have places where, if ICE was trying to meet a quota, you would see ICE going to them,” Evans said.

Voters conflicted over approach to immigration enforcement

Some 4 of 10 voters in Evans’ district are Hispanic. In more than two dozen interviews across the district, every voter who identified as Hispanic spoke of being offended by Trump’s immigration crackdown. Many — U.S. citizens all — feared for their own safety.

“I don’t know if, just because of my last name or how I look, they might go after me,” said Jennifer Hernandez, 30, as she entered a Walmart in the town of Brighton.

Plenty of other voters supported the Minnesota operation, even after the shootings of Good and Pretti.

“They’ve got to clean up the immigrants, definitely,” said Herb Smith, a 61-year-old generator installer and Trump voter.

Smith, who is Black, said he once lived in Minneapolis and left because of the Somali immigrants who have drawn Trump’s ire: “Trump’s right, these people are poisoning our people.”

Dominic Morrison, 39, a telecommunications technician, said he does not like to see people lose their lives, but feels enforcing immigration laws is necessary.

“I know everybody wants a better life and better situation, but if I went somewhere else without permission they wouldn’t take nicely to it,” Morrison said.

Racial profiling has some ‘walking on eggshells’

Democrats in the district said they are enraged by the enforcement surge and blame Evans along with Trump.

“He’s said nothing against it,” said Jim Getman, a retired electrical technician who volunteered for Democrats in 2024. “He’s always supported Trump in everything he does.”

Joe Hernandez, 27, pays far less attention to politics. But the forklift operator and his family members — all citizens or legal residents — are fearful they could be swept up by immigration officers who are racially profiling people.

“We’re walking on eggshells right now,” Hernandez said as he filled up a water jug at a tap outside a Mexican supermarket in Commerce City, a heavily immigrant city at the southern end of the 8th District.

Hernandez said it has gotten so bad that he and his four siblings, all citizens born in the United States have considered moving to property his family owns in Mexico for their safety. He did not vote in 2024 and has never cast a ballot before, like many he knows.

He intends to change that this year, and he thinks he is not the only one.

“More people are like, oh … we’ve got to vote,” he said.