‘It gives them a path’: Rep. Gabe Evans says The Dignity Act will bring reform and opportunity to immigration policies

Colorado Republican Congressman Gabe Evans from the 8th Congressional District has signed on to the Dignity Act, a bill that would offer legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants under certain conditions, such as paying $7,000 and any back taxes, and not having a criminal history.

“This is a work visa reform program that's very, very specifically tailored so that only those people who have been here for a long time, who have been trying to do it right, who have been trying to work hard, not causing problems, not taking any sort of handouts, it gives them a path,” said Evans. “And it closes all the other doors for people to exploit the system.”

Evans is running for reelection in the state’s only swing congressional seat, which also has the highest percentage of Latino residents at nearly 40 percent. Evans has so far supported president Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and did vote to fund it, and the Dignity Act is getting a lot of pushback from some on the Right who view it as amnesty and a betrayal of core conservative values.

Bente Birkeland: You're one of the sponsors of the Dignity Act, which seeks to provide a pathway to some undocumented immigrants to get legal status, immigrants who want to be in the country to contribute and don't have a criminal background. I want to drill down on the question of a criminal background a bit, since that seems central to your bill, over deporting people who've already been in the country for a while.

Recent reporting from the Colorado Sun using data from ICE's field office in Denver shows that a lot of people arrested by ICE had pending criminal charges. They weren't necessarily convicted yet of a crime. How comfortable are you with ICE making arrests in those instances when the legal process hasn't fully played out?

Rep. Gabe Evans: Well, this is basically how the entire law enforcement system works is when you get arrested, of course you haven't been convicted of a crime at that point because you have yet to go through the whole criminal process. But what we do know is if somebody is illegally in the country and they're doing things – again, to get arrested and charged with a crime, you have to meet probable cause; there's a legal standard in there that you have to meet – and so if somebody's illegally present in the country and they're doing bad enough things to where there's probable cause to then charge them with additional crimes, then yeah, we do this with American citizens. Why wouldn't you arrest somebody like that and then evaluate the case and decide whether or not they can be released on bond or whether they need to be held based on the flight risk or the public safety risk that the crimes they committed potentially posed?

And so I think it's important to note that you reference that Colorado Sun article. The headline I thought was a little bit misleading, because if you actually look at the numbers in that article, 67 percent of people in ICE custody in Denver either have a criminal conviction or pending criminal cases. So two thirds of the people in ICE detention in Colorado, again, have either been criminally convicted or have they've met that legal standard of probable cause to be charged with a crime and they're going through the criminal justice system, at which point, like we do with everybody else in the country, you have to do that analysis of risk to the public safety, risk of flight, is this somebody that we need to hold onto or can they be granted a bond?

Birkeland: Would you say you're more comfortable with detaining people who haven't yet completed the criminal justice process yet versus deportation?

Rep. Evans: Again, it depends on what crime we're talking about here. Every single criminal case is different, and so that's why, again, as a cop for 10 years, this was something that I had to explain in each and every case. First, I would explain it to the DA, the prosecuting attorney, and then we would explain it to the judge as to whether or not we thought we needed a bond, whether or not this person could be released on a bond, whether this person needed to be held pending the case because what they did was so bad and the flight risk was so high. That's something that happens uniquely and is uniquely tailored to every single individual case. There's no templates here. Every case is different and everyone needs that individual analysis to make a determination.

Birkeland: Generally, how would you define criminal background? For instance, would you count traffic violations or should it be for more egregious things like using or selling drugs or robberies?

Rep. Evans: Again, I was a traffic cop, and so I reconstructed accidents involving up to and including fatal accidents that occurred on the roadways and so I think even when we talk about traffic violations, we have to be, again, precise. Are we talking a traffic violation that was a brake light out or are we talking about a traffic violation where somebody was going 24 miles an hour through a school zone? Because those are two very different types of traffic violations. You have to look into the history there. Is this the first time someone has ever had contact with a law enforcement agency or does this person regularly drive 24 miles an hour over the speed limit through a school zone?

So there's a whole range of background information that, again, has to go into these cases to where even something that is cast as a simple traffic violation may not merely be a simple traffic violation if there's a long and lengthy history there of people behaving in a reckless manner toward the motoring public. Because at the end of the day, a car is a 4,000 pound missile. You hit a pedestrian, you hit somebody else in a vehicle, we see it all the time, the fatalities on the roadway. So I don't think it's fair just to simply discount traffic violations without, again, going into the individual details of each unique case.

Birkeland: And for just a final question on this particular aspect, for those with criminal records and convictions, ICE lists DUI as the most serious offense. Is that something you think people should be targeted specifically for?

Rep.  Evans: DUIs result, and don't quote me precisely on this one, but it's somewhere between a third and a half of the fatalities on roadways in Colorado. Hundreds of people every year in Colorado die as a result of intoxicated drivers. And so, yeah, if you're out getting DUIs, this is something that's serious because, as we said, this has a very, very high fatality rate in the state of Colorado.

Birkeland: I was recently in CD8 talking to voters, and I did hear from a number of people that they do want it to be easier for immigrants who are doing things the right way and working and wanting to add value to the country to have a pathway to stay in the country legally. I was looking, though, at some of the responses to your social media posts about this bill, the Dignity Act. There are conservatives who say it's amnesty. They don't think anyone who entered illegally should get legal status. They're firmly opposed to this, as I'm sure you've seen. You've been called a traitor. How do you respond to that?

Rep. Evans: We know that at the end of the day, people in America want their representatives to actually engage in conversation and actually work for the people in their district, and that's what this Dignity Act does. It's a bipartisan bill. Everything that we just talked about, you have criminal backgrounds, you're causing problems in the community, guess what? There's not a place here in the United States. If you're going to come here and you're going to cause problems, you're going to drive drunk, you're going to do other bad things.

But as you said, there's a lot of folks in the United States, and I want to be very precise here because there's actually a lot of folks who legally entered the United States, came here on a work visa, came here on some other sort of legal authorization, and then during the previous administration, when Biden threw the borders open and broke our immigration system even more, a lot of these folks who, again, legally did the work to come to the United States on a work visa or some other sort of authorization, couldn't get their visa renewed. They were getting cut in line by all the folks swarming across the border.

And then those folks, of course, had to make the decision, do I keep working even though my visa says expired? Or maybe I took a promotion outside the scope of my visa and wasn't able to get it updated. And by the way, these are specific examples that I've heard in CD8 as I've talked to folks, talked to employers, talked to farmers, talked to ag producers, talked to hospitality folks, talked to construction workers, talked to the people that are trying to build homes so that we can get our housing crisis under control. These are all specific things that they've told me, and so that's where this Dignity Act comes in. It's not amnesty. There's no path to citizenship. There's nothing free being handed out in this bill.

The process is if you've been in the country before the Biden administration, no criminal background, you're not taking any federal welfare, which means the only other way that you've been in the country that long to sustain yourself means that you're actually working a job, then you can apply to enter the Dignity program. Requirements to enter the Dignity program are you’ve got to pay back all your back taxes. There's, again, nothing free in here. You have to pay a $7,000 fee to enter the program. This program doesn't cost taxpayers a penny. It's all paid for by the fees of the folks that are entering the program. You have to stick with the program for seven years and continue to not commit crimes, cause problems, take any sort of federal welfare.

What do you get in exchange for all of this? Well, you get the ability to work in the United States. Not citizenship. Not amnesty. You literally just get the ability to keep doing what you've presumably been doing for the last five years, which is continue to work. At the end of the seven years, then, once again, you don't get citizenship. You get a green card. So it's not amnesty. This is a work visa reform program that's very, very specifically tailored so that only those people who have been here for a long time, who have been trying to do it right, who have been trying to work hard, not causing problems, not taking any sort of handouts, it gives them a path. And it closes all the other doors for people to exploit the system.

For instance, this bill also includes a mandate that every employer in the United States will use E-Verify. E-Verify is the federal program to determine whether somebody is even eligible to work in the United States. And so it really does set rules of the road. You either are in the Dignity program or you're getting deported. You either are complying with being able to work hard and contribute positively to the United States, and if you can't, then you get deported. And by the way, you can't sneak money or employment under the table anymore because now every employer is mandated to use E-Verify to determine if somebody is legally eligible to work in the United States. That's what the bill does.

Birkeland: How viable is this in terms of having a real chance to pass? We've seen conservative lawmakers instead seeking to revive the Secure the Border Act. Do you need President Trump behind your bill? And have some of the main sponsors like Representative Salazar talked to the president about it?

Rep. Evans: Well, I think obviously you need President Trump behind the bill because that's just constitutionally how our government is structured, where even if the House and the Senate pass it, the president still has to sign it. So we're not going to be able to put something on his desk that he's opposed to. But look at previous comments the president has said. Look at just the basic stats on the USDA website. If you go look and see how many folks are working in agriculture that don't have a legal status, when I looked last night, it was around 42 percent.

We used to have a saying in the Army. You got to play the hand you're dealt, not the hand you wish you had. And the hand we're dealt is the immigration system has been broken for decades. The result of that is you have critical, critical industries like agriculture where 42 percent of the ag labor force doesn't have legal documentation.

We have to have some sort of way to protect American farmers, to be able to protect folks in my district, and be able to weed out those folks that are here to freeload or exploit our country, commit crimes, cause problems, but again, be able to give that viable pathway forward for folks that want to work hard, not cause problems, pay their taxes, pay their back taxes, pay an additional $7,000 in order to get a work permit, again, with the ultimate goal of, again, not citizenship, being able to get a green card so that they can continue to stay and work in the United States and be contributing members to our society. I think that concept has a pathway forward, and we'll just see how it grows and shapes and evolves as it moves through Congress.

Birkeland: Shifting topics, Congress passed the rescission package in the last week. Talk to me about your vote on pulling back that money. Why do you think public broadcasting and foreign aid should lose federal funding?

Rep.  Evans: Well, it's where the money is actually going to. And you could see on the floor speeches, or hear on the floor speeches, all of the different just ridiculous things that some of this money is going to, funding for sedentary migrants in other parts of the world, funding for random different woke programs in different parts of the world. Why are American taxpayers, why are hardworking folks in my district paying for things like that? And so through this rescissions package, again, this is a small percentage of the funding for both of these agencies. It's not like public broadcasting has been gutted. It's not like foreign aid has been gutted. This is targeted specifically at a lot of those things that I think Americans spoke very loud and clear that they don't want their taxpayer money going to. They don't want to have gay Sesame Street for Sub-Saharan Africa being paid for by US taxpayer dollars. And so that's what we saw with the rescissions vote, making sure that that money goes to Americans first.

Birkeland: You've talked a lot about how your faith informs your lawmaking. Walk me through your thoughts on those foreign aid cuts in particular, because we do hear from many religious leaders that a lot of that money, maybe not all of it, but a lot of it benefits poor people around the world that is not waste, fraud, and abuse. Do you think governments of the wealthiest countries have a moral obligation to help the poorest in the world?

Rep. Evans: So I think just because a thing ought to be done doesn't necessarily mean that government is always the best entity to do that thing. We know that pretty much everything that government touches runs mediocre at best, and then there's always going to be fraud, waste, and abuse in that system. So again, just because a thing ought to be done doesn't mean that the government is the best or the most efficient vehicle to do those things.

And so I think you'll see, again, as you mentioned, I'm a religious person and I think that what you'll see is that there will be a lot of either nonprofit organizations, faith-based organizations – look how much money Bill Gates just gave away towards some of his nonprofits and his charitable-oriented constellation of institutions – I think you'll see a lot of money flow into these things through those mechanisms.

And to me, as a small-government conservative, I think that's the appropriate way to handle this. You're not using the coercive power of government to tax people of their money, take their money out of their pocket, and then go give it to something that they have very little say in. If people want to support those charitable things, again, there's many different institutions out there that do it. I make sure that I give to my local church so that they can engage in that charitable activity, and I think that charitable activity is important to do. I just don't think that it always has to be the government using taxpayer funded money in order to accomplish that, quite often less efficiently than actual charities and nonprofits would do it.

Birkeland: So it should more be kind of an individual decision versus the obligation of the government of the US saying, "We're committing to this."

Rep. Evans: Yeah, as you said, Americans are incredibly generous and charitable people. And so I think that, as somebody once said, "One is not taxed nearly half of their money in order to then turn around and take personal accountability for their poor neighbor." If you're taxed at, at times, close to 50 percent of your money, you're not going to have a lot left over to be able to go and engage charity.

So I stand by, again, that concept that smaller government is better government. Just because a thing ought to be done doesn't mean the government is the only entity that can do it. You put more money back into the people's pockets, into the pockets of hard-working Americans, they're going to be charitable with that and they're going to be more efficient with that. And we already talked through, like I said, a couple of different examples of churches or of folks like Bill Gates putting money into these projects. They're not going to go unfunded. They're just not going to be funded via the coercive power of government taxing people.

Birkeland: I talked to the Weld County Food Bank recently about what they viewed as the impacts of the Big Beautiful Bill and what it would mean on the ground, and they said they don't think they'll be able to provide as many meals to people who come in for help. That already is the case in terms of, pound for pound, how much food they were able to provide in previous years. One of the staffers got teary and she doesn't feel like the food bank will be able to deliver for working families in Weld County the way they want to and the way the community needs them to. What is your response and what do you tell them?

Rep. Evans: Yeah, so I sat down and had this exact same conversation with the Weld County Food Bank. And you know what they told me? They said, "Gabe, we need to cut down," and the line he was referring to was the line of folks that were coming to the food bank. He said, "We need to cut down on the line." And the way you cut down on the line of folks that are relying on the food bank is you fix the economy. When you put more money back into people's pockets and they have the wherewithal to be able to provide for themselves, we're able to reward work by taxing less of their money, giving them that ability to provide for themselves, that rising tide lifts all boats. And we talked through the numbers with the Weld Food Bank. Just a few short years ago, when the economy was doing better, the Weld Food Bank was only serving about a third as many people as they currently are right now.

And so that's what the Big Beautiful Bill does. The Big Beautiful Bill, on average, puts $2,000, a little bit more than $2,000, directly back into the pockets of working families in Colorado. This is through things like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, a wide variety of other tax breaks. We're giving tax cuts to small businesses so that they can reinvest that back into their employees or their business. We're giving tax breaks to families with kids, increasing the size of the child tax deduction. There's so many different tax breaks in this bill that, in addition to a little bit more than $2,000 on average, that working families – and when I say working families, I'm talking the bottom 85 percent. There's a lot of fear mongering going around about this bill that says it's tax breaks for billionaires. False. The tax breaks are aimed at the bottom 85 percent of wage earners. In my district, results in about $2,000 on average directly back into the pockets of working class families.

And then when you factor in all of the other positive things for the economy, it's estimated to result in somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000 per year of additional purchasing power for average everyday Americans through things like we talked about, helping small businesses, being able to reinvest back into their employees, fixing the economy, things of that nature. That's what is going to help the Weld Food Bank get back to just those pre-COVID numbers. Again, they've seen three times as many people using the food bank now as were using it pre-COVID. We want to get back to the pre-COVID numbers. They want to get back to the pre-COVID numbers when I had the conversation with them. And the way we do that is by fixing the economy because that rising tide lifts all boats.

Birkeland: Let's talk about SNAP, increased eligibility requirements and more of the cost shifting to states. In the latest statistics, only around ten states have an error rate below six percent, so states above that six percent are going to have to pay more of the cost for SNAP. You've said it's not a cut, that states like Colorado just have to manage this program better. My question is how does Colorado do that when part of this benefit is based on a household's net monthly income and there can be fluctuations in that income? Especially if someone does contract work, if they're not a salaried employee. And I've heard that's where some of that error rate factors in. How would you improve that?

Rep. Evans: Well, and the first thing is we did it pre-COVID. I'll give credit where credit's due, Hickenlooper when he was governor – Democrat governor by the way – John Hickenlooper met the standard. Colorado, under John Hickenlooper's administration, was below that six percent error rate. So if we can merely get Colorado back to, again, pre-COVID standard of operating, we've met the standard. We were meeting the standard six years ago. It's just in the last several years where, unfortunately, Governor Polis and the way he has administered this program has spiked the error rate from around five percent to nearly double that at ten percent.

And again, we talk about this money like it's federal money; it's taxpayer money. If we are being bad stewards of taxpayer money, that's ultimately a negative feedback loop that's hurting working class families, working class Americans and Coloradans and folks in my district because that's money that's getting taken out of their pocket. They have no choice about it, that's money that's coming out of their pocket. And then in the SNAP program, if ten percent of that is going to fraud, waste and abuse, I mean, I would be pretty unhappy if ten percent of the tax money coming out of my pocket going to feed my neighbors isn't actually getting there. It's being used in fraud, waste, and abuse.

So Colorado can get every penny of federal money that they're currently getting right now if they merely meet the standard that we were meeting just a few short years ago under Hickenlooper in the pre-COVID era.

Birkeland: Colorado faces in the next legislative session a $700 million budget gap. Now, according to state economists, it could be about a billion dollars with the federal cuts. Is a little part of you glad you're not a state lawmaker having to come back in January and balance the budget?

Rep. Evans: Let's talk about the budget. The budget for the state of Colorado has grown 50 percent in the last seven years, even though the population of the state has only grown five percent. Seven years ago, the state budget was $29 billion, and this year we just signed a $44 billion budget. Taxes and fees on everyday working class Coloradans have gone up by enormous margins over the last seven years.

So when we talk about a $1 billion hole in the budget, that's only a $1 billion hole in the budget based on this ludicrously fast growth that we've seen over the last seven years, where again, the state government, state spending has grown by 50 percent even though the population has grown only by five percent. So we need to, again, be better stewards of the money rather than nickel and diming and feeing and taxing Coloradans to the breaking point, which is what's happening right now.

Birkeland: I think the thing we certainly hear from some of the economists are certain costs are rising faster significantly than inflation. For instance, long-term care and Medicaid costs, and the people using Medicaid are using it more frequently and have more significant illnesses, and that is one big driver of what we're seeing in terms of government costs.

Rep. Evans: The other big driver in government cost is the fact that Colorado has a heavier regulatory burden now than New York state does. We got a governor that talks out of one side of his mouth and says he wants to cut red tape, but at the same time he's imposed so much red tape on Colorado that, again, we're actually more heavily regulated than New York state right now. Colorado's economy has gone from a top ten economy, where it typically is for the last couple of decades, to, depending on whose numbers you use, we're 37th to 41st in the nation. This is what happens when taxes and fees and red tape go up, and the ability to reward work by allowing people to actually keep more of their hard-earned money goes down in states like Colorado where taxes, fees, state spending has gone up 50 percent in the last seven years, even though the population has only increased five percent. We are driving the inflation with regulation in Colorado, and it needs to stop.

Birkeland: You're running for re-election in a much different landscape. You're now the incumbent, you're now the person in a position of power. We have the Big Beautiful Bill that just passed and you've said it will boost the economy, create jobs. There's a lot at stake when it comes to the implications of it. Do you feel like that bill could have over-promised?

Rep. Evans: I think that when you look at how bad things got the last four years of the Biden administration, I think once this bill hits the economy and we actually truly start to see the positive impacts of this, I think people are going to be really, really happy in terms of cost of living, in terms of money and tax cuts coming back into their pockets, and in terms of economic opportunity.

So nobody can forecast the future, but I'm feeling very, very, very confident that as the positive effects of this bill, the tax cuts, the money back into people's pockets, the deregulation, the public safety. Let's talk about public safety. A couple of years ago, crime was costing the state of Colorado $27 billion a year in lost economic productivity, a lot of that driven by wide open borders and sanctuary state policies that allowed Colorado to become the national headquarters for Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang, that have led to a billion dollars roughly in retail theft every year in Colorado.

And we've been able to solve a lot of that stuff in the last seven months with the new administration, securing the border, making sure that we have the resources to be able to go out and crush these gangs, the drugs that are flowing into our communities, the organized crime. All of these things are supported by the Big Beautiful Bill, and I think they're going to have very positive impacts in terms of getting crime under control, getting the border under control, getting transnational gangs and cartels and the drug trade under control, helping our economy through cutting taxes and deregulating. All of these things are going to make everybody's life better next year, and I'm feeling very, very confident about that.

Birkeland: I did talk to some voters who are Republicans, not MAGA, but voted for you, voted for Trump. They were waiting to see how things would go, and they said they didn't want the social safety net to drop out. Are you hearing any concerns from folks who, not Democrats, not talking about Twitter or cable news, but constituents who are worried about some of those potential impacts?

Rep. Evans: Yeah, so there's, again, a lot of fear mongering that's gone on in this space, talking about so-called cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid is not being cut. Medicaid spending, again, is going to go up by about 20 to 25 percent under the Republican bill. There's going to be more money in Medicaid every single year under the Republican bill. It's just we're going to be good stewards of that taxpayer money and that money is not going to be going to support young men who refuse to work. It's not going to be going to support people who are straight up ineligible for the program, but Biden-era rules didn't allow us to remove them from Medicaid. And it's not going to go to people illegally present in the country. And by the way, that's a concept that's in the Dignity Act. If you're taking federal welfare, you're not eligible for the Dignity Act.

And so we see a lot of different driving forces, if you will, that are all coming together around a single point, which is we're not getting a safety net, more spending is going into that. We're not gutting federal spending. It's just going to be used efficiently and effectively. And all of the fraud, waste, and abuse that we cut out of the programs are going back into taxpayers pockets so that they have more money to be able to spend as they see fit and not the government.