Ximena Bustillo, Senior Reporter

Oct. 21, 2026, 5:01 AM EDT

Loud ranchera music echoed off concrete walls as Rep. Gabe Evans watched a parade of black and white cows rotating on an automated milking carousel. Workers popped in and out of view, adjusting the equipment before leading the animals back to their pens.

Gary Henrickson explained to the congressman — his congressman — that Bella Holsteins, his dairy farm in Weld County, Colo., is an early adopter of technology that could one day require fewer human workers.

But not yet. In the meantime, this kind of work doesn’t qualify for agricultural work visas — and the cows need to be tended to every day, “even when it’s Christmas,” he emphasized.

The message during Evans’ visit last week was clear: Henrickson needs his workers. But immigration enforcement fears have “sent shivers” through his workforce.

“Our employees get extremely nervous,” Henrickson later told Bloomberg Law. “Even if their paperwork is in order, they still come and they feel like they’re visitors in the US.”

The farmer supports Evans, but his concern goes to an issue coursing through the race for Colorado’s 8th District, a battleground that could shape control of Congress.

Latinos comprise about 30% of the voters in the district, which sprawls from the Denver and Aurora suburbs to the oil and agricultural lands surrounding the meatpacking town of Greeley. But a growing number of them are unaffiliated, and both parties are scrambling to court their votes and get them to turn out next month.

“Latinos here in Colorado are becoming less and less sort of wed to a specific party,” said Dusti Gurule, president of the group Colorado Organization for Latina Opportunity and Reproductive Rights.

As a group, unaffiliated voters soared by 80% in the state from 2016 to 2026, outpacing Democrat or Republican registrations.

Evans, a first-term Republican, flipped the 8th District seat in 2024 by less than 1% — just a few thousand votes. Since then, the area has felt the brunt of an expensive economy and the reach of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, which promised mass deportations and a focus beyond the border regions of the US.

That means a slowdown in the processing of immigration applications such as work permits. And more detention centers, like the one Immigration and Customs Enforcement has proposed opening in the district.

Battleground District

Immigration might have been a winning issue for Republicans in 2024, but this cycle both Evans and his well-funded Democratic challenger, former state Rep. Manny Rutinel, are grappling with how to make it their own.

“Now more than ever, the Latino vote is so important — so that politicians finally stop playing games with our community and start taking us seriously,” said Arturo Vargas, one of a dozen Hispanic faith leaders in Colorado who met last month with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

A Paralyzing Fear

Immigrants comprise about 14% of the population in the 8th District, according to the immigration advocacy organization FWD.us. More than 90,000 either lack legal status or live with someone who does.

Michelle Santillanes, a small business owner, described the area as a place where multi-generational families have worked for years — and where it feels like everyone knows someone who has been detained. Colorado has avoided the high-profile ICE enforcement campaigns, but an existing detention center in Aurora, just east of Denver, increased its capacity.

Santillanes is a US citizen whose family is from El Salvador, but her husband, who’s from Mexico, was once without legal status. She runs a remodeling company in the area and, until recently, a restaurant. Immigration enforcement fears have affected both businesses, she said.

Customers “wouldn’t show up. They were afraid to go and eat. They just wanted to work and go home because they were afraid to get picked up anywhere,” Santillanes said last week as she sipped hot cafe de olla from a ceramic mug at a bustling Mexican restaurant in north Aurora. “Even people with green cards, they’re afraid.”

At her remodeling company, some workers declined to accept assignments out of fear of being detained.

Running a business is hard enough having to master marketing, staffing, permits, and taxes, Santillanes said. Then, she said, “on top of doing everything, guess what? Here you go, here’s immigration as well. Here’s the economy shutting down because of immigration.”

Santillanes said she’s still not sure who’ll get her vote in two weeks.

“It’s like we see the good in both sides and that’s where it’s hard to decide,” she said. “That’s why this time around I want to educate myself more — because I’ve seen what not voting does.”

‘Folks are Furious’

Rutinel has been among the progressive Democrats leaning into immigration as a campaign issue, primarily focusing on enforcement tactics.

“Folks are furious because they feel like they’ve been lied to,” he told Bloomberg Law during an interview Saturday, before talking with a dozen union members preparing for an afternoon of door-knocking.

A Yale Law School graduate and the son of an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, Rutinel said he would press for accountability for any enforcement officer who breaks the law. He also supports requiring judicial warrants for raids on homes and banning officers from covering their faces.

“We need to chart a new path forward,” he told the canvassers before they dispersed.

Door-knocking that day alongside the union members was Lucia Gomez, national immigration coordinator for Laborers’ International Union of North America. She helps union members get immigration defense and conducts know-your-rights training.

“We have a lot of mixed households,” she said of her work with the members. “This particular House race will allow another voice in Congress that begins to speak about individuals and about working families beyond just their production, but more about their contributions to their communities.”

Evans, meanwhile, has tried to paint his challenger as an “open-the-border radical,” criticizing his previous support for a state program to extend state healthcare for all residents regardless of immigration status.

Like other vulnerable Republicans this cycle — such as Rep. Monica De La Cruz in Texas and Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas — Evans has a softened stance on immigration enforcement.

“We’ve helped over 100 people get or renew work permits or visas so that they can legally continue to work in the United States,” Evans told Bloomberg Law, adding that he believes he has pressured the administration to focus on enforcement against people with violent criminal records.

Publicly available data shows most people in ICE detention don’t have criminal convictions, and significant slowdowns in processing work permits have caused people to lapse in status across the country.

Evans also acknowledged industries in his district rely on people without legal status, citing a Department of Agriculture report that about 40% of the industry’s laborers are working without authorization.

“If you deport 40% of the ag workforce, you crushed the American farmer overnight and we’re all starving a week later when we can’t even make our own food,” said the former Army helicopter pilot and state representative. “I wish that wasn’t the case, but you got to play the hand you’re dealt, not the hand you wish you had.”

Evans also turns to his own heritage on the campaign trail, touting that he is the only Hispanic member of Colorado’s delegation. His mom, who is of Mexican descent, is featured in Spanish-language advertisements.

Pressing for Action

The Republican incumbent arranged last month’s meeting between Mullin and the pastors who shared concerns they hear regularly from their congregants.

“Under this new administration — and this also happened under previous administrations — I’ve had to help people who lost everything,” Adan Aguirre, one of the pastors, told Bloomberg Law.

He and two others who attended the meeting said Mullin told them ICE didn’t plan to target their community events, that the agency’s goal was to detain those with criminal records. But the DHS secretary also said officers who encounter someone without legal status will detain them; he said ICE is merely enforcing existing laws.

The faith leaders urged the administration to consider legislative proposals like the Dignity Act. The bill, introduced by Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), would provide a pathway to legalization for several groups of immigrants, including farmworkers, those who have lived in the US for a prolonged period of time, and recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Evans is a cosponsor of the bill. The pastors said they’re ready to work with whomever is elected on a solution.

“I know firsthand how difficult life can be when you lack stable legal status,” said pastor David Gramajo. “We are fighting hard to ensure they are given that opportunity. Because we know that if many of these individuals get that chance, it will help many families across the United States — especially in our own state.”

Vargas said the Mullin meeting was not his first with a public official. And despite attempts from the secretary to assure the group that there are legal pathways, he knows there are members of his congregation who cannot naturalize or seek legal status.

“In my church, I have people who have been living in the country for 30 years, who are grandpas and grandmas and who still can’t fix their status,” Vargas said.

He understands the fear: Even as a US citizen, Vargas carries a photo of his passport.

A Race to the End

About $47 million has already been spent on ads in the district, according to AdImpact, and campaign watchdog Open Secrets calls it Colorado’s most expensive House race. Campaign finance reports filed last week showed Rutinel with the money edge in the final stretch, but Evans has had the support of prominent GOP donors, including Elon Musk.

Evaristo Gómez, a civic engagement manager for the national turnout advocacy group Mi Familia Vota who is campaigning for Rutinel, said his group has been focusing efforts on the rural, northern areas of the district, which tend to lean Republican.

“It’s a really special place in Colorado’s political landscape. It’s amazing to see that it is such a competitive district because I think a lot of people are feeling disenfranchised or disillusioned,” Gomez said.

On the other side, Angel Merlos, with the center-right organization The Libre Initiative, boasts knocking on more than 30,000 doors for Evans since March.

Both sides see the Latino vote as a decisive factor in the outcome.

“The Hispanic community is growing and any politician who doesn’t consider and account for the Hispanic Latino vote, they’re only hurting themselves,” Merlos said. “We would love to see them come out in strong numbers.”