BY FREDA MIKLIN
GOVERNMENTAL REPORTER
First-term Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, who represents Colorado’s eighth congressional district, is listed in a July 24 article in the National Journal as the most vulnerable sitting member, in either party, of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2026.
CD8 contains the northern suburbs of Denver in Adams County and extends north to Greeley.
So far, seven Democrats, including the person Evans beat in 2023 by seven-tenths of one percent, former U.S. Rep. Yadira Caraveo, state Rep. Shannon Bird, who heads the Joint Budget Committee of the general assembly, and outgoing eight-year Colorado Treasurer Dave Young, have announced plans to challenge Evans for the seat next year. Also seeking the Democratic nomination are first-term state Rep. Manny Rutinel, former teacher’s union head Amie Baca-Oehlert, military veteran Evan Munsing, former Republican John Francis Szemler, and Denis Abrate.
No Republicans have announced plans to challenge Evans for the GOP nomination in 2026.
Evans, who announced on his website on July 2 that he voted for H.R. 1 – One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB), described it as “a bold, commonsense blueprint for how to secure the border, lower costs for families, crack down on dangerous illegal immigrants, and give local law enforcement the tools needed to keep our communities safe.”
According to CBS News, the bill contains more than $46.5 billion for border wall construction and related expenses, $45 billion to expand detention capacity for immigrants in custody, and about $30 billion for hiring, training and other resources for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Rolling Stone reported that, Tom Homan, who President Trump calls his “border czar,” said, about the bill, “You think we’re arresting people now? Wait till we get the funding to do what we got to do,” and that Vice President J.D. Vance remarked about the BBB, “Everything else (in the bill) is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions.”
On July 15, less than two weeks after issuing that statement about H.R. 1, Evans sponsored H.R. 4393, a bipartisan bill named “The Dignity Act of 2025” that includes “an earned opportunity for long-term immigrants to stay here and work,” according to Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL), Evans’ co-sponsor. According to published reports, the bill “includes protections for Dreamers who meet education, work, or military service standards, and would modernize and streamline the legal immigration system, reduce green card backlogs, and create new temporary family and student visa options.”
Evans’ said, about H.R.4393, “I’m proud to help introduce Congresswoman Salazar’s bipartisan Dignity Act, which prioritizes border security while delivering a practical solution for immigrants who want to work hard, follow our laws, and be productive members of society. Our legislation accomplishes what Latino business owners and community members have been asking for: give immigrants positively contributing to our community an opportunity to pursue the American Dream.”
It has been widely reported that immigrants who fit that description have been openly arrested and are being held in detention facilities by ICE, which will soon have many more resources to do so, from the BBB that Evans supported.
One week later, on July 22, Colorado Newsline published a strongly researched report that showed that Evans had been misrepresenting how his family first came to the United States, for years.
In a deeply documented story, Colorado Newsline senior reporter Chase Woodruff wrote that Evans’ grandfather, who died in 2014, “entered the country unlawfully with his mother and siblings in 1929, at the age of 5, and resided unlawfully in Texas for the intervening 12 years.” The story contains a copy of an alien registration form (AR-2) prepared shortly after Cuauhtemoc (Evans’ grandfather), then 16 years old, was arrested for an “immigration violation” in El Paso and “made the subject of deportation proceedings.”
Woodruff also reports that, “Cuauhtemoc’s AR-2 form also lists a prior, undated arrest for “attempted burglary,” placing the 16-year-old in a category of immigrants that Evans has said without exception should be deported. Evans was a vocal supporter of the Laken Riley Act, which was passed by Republican congressional majorities in January and requires federal immigration agents to prioritize the detention of any undocumented immigrant arrested for a “burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting offense.”
In a January 2024 pre-primary debate sponsored by the Republican Women of Weld County, Evans was asked what he would do about the millions of undocumented people living in the U.S. He said, “If you’re in this country illegally…you need to go stand in that line, do it the right way, do it the legal way, so you’re not leapfrogging over folks like my grandfather, who did it the right way and did it the legal way.”
Colorado Newsline does not dispute that Evans’ grandfather served honorably in World War II, earned service medals, and was subsequently granted full citizenship.
Woodruff’s full, detailed report on what was going on when Evans’ family came to the U.S., including photos of U.S. Department of Justice documents, and historical information about Mexico in the 1920s, can be found at, https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/07/22/u-s-rep-gabe-evans-misrepresented-familys-immigration-history/.