What Colorado’s swing House districts show about Republicans’ immigration results in the midterms

GREELEY, Colo. (AP) — Like many Donald Trump voters, Miranda Niedermayer isn’t opposed to immigration enforcement. She was pleased with the Republican president’s initial moves in his second term, which she saw as targeting immigrants who were in the United States illegally and had committed crimes.

But Niedermayer, 35, has grown increasingly disillusioned with Trump. Federal immigration officials have killed two U.S. citizens in recent weeks during Trump’s crackdown in Minneapolis.

“In the beginning, they were getting criminals, but now they’re ripping people off from immigration proceedings, looking for the smallest traffic violation” to deport someone, Niedermeier said. She said she was appalled because the approach of the administration was not Christian.

“It shouldn’t be life and death,” she said. “We’re not a third world country. What’s going on?”

Trump’s immigration campaign in Minnesota, and the deaths of Renee Goode and Alex Pretty, have reverberated through the farms, oil and gas rigs and shopping centers of Colorado’s 8th Congressional District, a swing seat stretching northeast from Denver. A month-long upheaval in Minnesota’s U.S. House district has solidified the political views of some and made others rethink their own.

“He needs to cool it on immigration,” said Edgar Cuttle, a 30-year-old Mexican-American oilfield worker who says he’s a Trump fan but is increasingly distressed by images of immigration agents detaining children and separating families. “It doesn’t make people like him.”

Republican congressman wants ICE to focus on criminals

If such sentiment persists into the fall, it could threaten House Republicans who won their seats by narrow margins and threaten the GOP’s complete control of political power in Washington.

Small change is also 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 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 instead of law-abiding people in the country illegally — as Evans puts it, “gangbangers, not grandmas.”

In an interview, Evans said he was concerned by claims by Immigration and Customs Enforcement that it could search homes with administrative warrants instead of ones signed by a judge. He said he looks forward to questioning Department of Homeland Security officials during upcoming House hearings.

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

“One side wants to fan the flames and create controversy in this space because they want to go to trial in November,” he said.

He noted that ICE has stepped up lightly in his district, with narrowly tailored operations targeting criminals rather than 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 into them,” Evans said.

Voters were conflicted over their approach to immigration enforcement

4 out of 10 voters in Evans’ district are Hispanic. In more than two dozen interviews across the district, every single voter who identified as Hispanic said they were outraged by Trump’s immigration crackdown. Many—all American citizens—feared for their safety.

“I don’t know, because of my last name or what I look like, they might be after me,” Jennifer Hernandez, 30, said as she entered a Walmart in downtown Brighton.

Many other voters supported the Minnesota operation, even after Good and Pretty’s firing.

“They should definitely purge the immigrants,” said Herb Smith, a 61-year-old generator installer and Trump voter.

Smith, who is black, said he once lived in Minneapolis and drew Trump’s ire over Somali immigrants: “Right on Trump, these people have poisoned our people.”

Dominic Morrison, 39, a telecommunications technician, said he doesn’t want to see people lose their lives, but believes immigration laws need to be enforced.

“I know everyone wants a good life and a good situation, but if I go anywhere without permission they won’t take it well,” Morrison said.

Racial profiling has some ‘walking on eggshells’

Democrats in the district said they were angered by the increased enforcement and blamed Evans along with Trump.

“He didn’t say anything against it,” said Jim Getman, a retired electrical technician who has volunteered for Democrats in 2024. “He has always supported Trump in everything he does.”

Joe Hernandez, 27, pays very little attention to politics. But the forklift operator and his family members — all citizens or legal residents — fear they could be deported by immigration officials over people they racially profile.

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

Hernandez said it has gotten so bad that he and his four siblings, all U.S.-born citizens, have considered moving to their family’s property in Mexico for their safety. He won’t vote in 2024 and has never voted before, as far as he knows.

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

“A lot of people are like, oh … we have to vote,” he said.