Castle Rock, Colorado – Catherine waited in Colombia for nine years until her immigration application was approved and she could join her siblings in the United States. Two years later, she said she is still waiting for her husband to be allowed to live in their new home in Colorado.
She gets angry thinking about the tens of thousands of people who flood across the southern border every month who didn't wait like she did.
“If you try, [it] In the right way, you have to wait a long time. You have to pay a fee,” she told Fox News Digital, “and some people just cross the border for free and that's it.”
“It's a disgrace that we have illegal immigrants here who are going to the front lines without going through this process,” Republican state Rep. Max Brooks, a member of the Castle Rock Town Council, told Fox News Digital.
Silhouettes of migrants seeking asylum in the United States line up at a border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, on January 18, 2025. Encounters at the Southwest border reached record highs of 1.6 million in 1986 and 2000, but have since declined for the first time in decades. It hit a low of about 304,000 in fiscal year 2017, but began to rise again during President Trump's first term and has since surged to new numbers. The highest value during the Biden administration. (Reuters/Jorge Dunes)
At the Colorado City site where President-elect Trump promised to eliminate “savage gangs” of illegal aliens.
Illegal immigration is one of the political issues that led to President Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 election. President Trump vowed to “end the practice of catch-and-release” in his inaugural address on Monday and issued a number of executive actions on his first day, including an order authorizing the military to draft a “border closure” plan and an order to cease its use. signed. Process immigration using the CBP One app.
President Trump's attention shifted to Colorado after a video went viral showing alleged Venezuelan immigrants carrying guns inside an Aurora apartment complex.
Ahead of Inauguration Day, Fox News Digital spoke with Katherine and her sister Zarie in Castle Rock, a town about 30 miles south of Denver, about immigration and Trump's deportation plans. Both sides agreed that the country needed strict border security.
“Most people come with the intention of working, helping the city grow, and growing personally, but there are a lot of people who aren't good people and slip through the cracks,” Zary says. She added that it's important for immigrants to “get an education in civic culture to behave as we all should.”
Zary and Katherine felt that the wave of illegal border crossings was slowing down legal immigration.
But David Beer, director of immigration studies at the liberal Cato Institute, rejected the idea that illegal immigration affects wait times for legal immigrants because Customs and Border Protection does not process immigration applications.
“That will be handled by another agency,” he said. “So when someone crosses the border illegally, there is no direct impact on people in the legal immigration system who are trying to go through the legal process.”
Bier also argued that the system's delays, green card caps and strict restrictions on eligibility make legal immigration “nearly impossible.”
“This is a system of guilt until proven innocent, and the only way you can prove your innocence or your immigration status is if you fall into a very narrow exception,” he said.
Zuli, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia, said green cards for spouses and children of lawful permanent residents used to be “easy” but now take years. “It's frustrating because the immigration process has become so much longer,” she said. (Alba Cuevas-Fantauzzi/Fox News Digital)
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According to , U.S. law currently allows authorities to issue up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas per year in certain categories. american immigration council. Preference will be given to non-direct relatives of U.S. citizens (there is no green card cap for adult spouses, parents, and children) and relatives of lawful permanent residents. Skilled workers, highly educated people, and “people of extraordinary ability” in the arts, sciences, athletics, and other fields also qualify.
“The exceptions are so narrow that only about 3 percent of people who tried to immigrate legally last year actually got a green card and became a lawful permanent resident,” Bier said. .
He said efforts to strengthen border security are less likely to deter illegal immigration than addressing primarily economic incentives to enter the United States.
“The benefits of coming to the United States are huge,” Beer said. “We can make it more expensive for people to come here, but as long as the benefits for immigrants here continue to increase, people will pay more and find ways around whatever restrictions are put in place, leading to further disruption and It will lead to anarchy” at our borders. ”
Bier argued that eliminating or raising immigration caps and making it easier for employers to sponsor workers “would ameliorate important parts of the problems we face at the border.”
“When I talk to Border Patrol officials, they ask people who come for peaceful reasons, like work or family reunions, to apply at the consulate and focus on their mission of protecting the border from threats, criminals, etc. “We really want to be able to do that. These are the people we want to keep out of the country,” he said.
Border Patrol agents search for migrants near Jacumba Hot Springs, California, in March 2024. (Hannah Rae Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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Meanwhile, in Colorado, state Rep. Brooks said he supports an “expedited system” to process undocumented immigrants who want to become legal residents, but said they would have to leave the country to get the process.
“We'll take them back across the border to the south and start doing the paperwork if they want to become naturalized,” he said. “But right now, if you are in this country illegally, you need to be deported.”
