“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?”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
“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.
