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Castle Rock, Colo. – Catherine waited in Colombia for nine years before her immigration application was approved, allowing her to join her siblings in the United States. Two years later, she said she is still waiting for her husband to be allowed to join her in their new home in Colorado.
He gets angry when he thinks about the tens of thousands of people flooding across the southern border each month who didn’t expect the way he did.
“If you try to do it the right way, you have to wait a long time. You have to pay fees,” he said Fox News Digital. “And some people just cross the border for free and that’s it.”
“It’s shameful that we have illegal migrants here that are cutting to the front of the line and not going through this process,” he told Fox News Digital.
Migrants seeking asylum in the United States are silhouetted as they queue at the border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, on January 18, 2025. Southwest border encounters, which reached previous highs of 1.6 million in 1986 and 2000, then declined to a decade of a decade Down from approximately 304,000 in fiscal year 2017, began to increase again during the first term of Trump, then soared to new highs during the Biden administration. (REUTERS/Jorge Duenes)
On the ground in Colorado City where President-elect Trump vows to root out ‘wild gangs’ of illegals
Illegal immigration is among the political issues that fueled President Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election. Trump promised in his inaugural address Monday to “end the practice of catch and release,” and signed a series of first-day executive actions that included an order authorizing the military to draft a plan to “seal the borders” and another ending the use of the CBP One application to process migrants.
Trump’s attention turned to Colorado after a viral video showed alleged Venezuelan migrants carrying weapons inside a Aurora Apartment Complex.
Ahead of Inauguration Day, Fox News Digital spoke with Catherine and her sister Zully on castle rockA city about 30 miles south of Denver, on immigration and Trump’s deportation plans. Both agreed that the country needed strict border security.
“Although most people come with the intention of working, helping the city grow and growing personally, there are many who slip through the cracks who are not good people,” Zully said. He added that it is important that immigrants “receive an education in civic culture so that we all behave as we should.”
Zully and Catherine felt the wave of illegal border crossings slowed down the process for legal immigrants.
But David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute, pushed back on the notion that illegal immigrants have any effect on wait times for legal immigrants because customs and border protection do not process immigration applications.
“It’s handled by a separate agency,” he said. “So if someone crosses the border illegally, that won’t directly affect anyone in the legal immigration system who is trying to go through the legal process.”
Bier also argued that delays plaguing the system, limits on green cards and strict restrictions on eligibility make legal immigration “nearly impossible.”
“You are guilty until the system is proven innocent. And the only way you can prove your innocence or your eligibility to emigrate is if you fall into very narrow exceptions,” he said.
Green cards for spouses and children of legal permanent residents used to be “simple,” but now take years, said Zully, who immigrated to the United States from Colombia. “It’s frustrating because the immigration processes have become much longer,” he said. (Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi/Fox News Digital)
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U.S. law currently allows officials to grant up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas each year in certain categories, according to the American Immigration Council. Priority is given to non-immobile family members of U.S. citizens (there is no limit on green cards for spouses, parents or children of adult citizens) and family members of lawful permanent residents. Skilled workers, highly educated people, and “people of extraordinary ability” in the arts, science, athletics, or other fields may also qualify.
“The exceptions are so narrow that actually only about 3% of all people trying to immigrate legally last year got a green card and were able to become a legal permanent resident,” Bier said.
He said efforts to strengthen border security are less likely to deter illegal immigration than addressing incentives, primarily economic, to enter the United States.
“The benefits of coming to the United States are enormous,” Bier said. “It may make it more expensive for people, but as long as the benefits continue to rise to immigrate here, you will see people paying more, finding ways around restrictions and it leads to more chaos and disorder at our borders.”
Bier argued that removing or increasing limits on immigration and making it easier for employers to sponsor workers “would improve an important part of the problems we face at the border.”
“When I talk to Border Patrol agents, they really want people who are coming for peaceful reasons, for work purposes or family reunification, to apply at the Consulate so we can focus on our work of securing the border against threats, criminals and other people we want to keep out of our country,” he said.
Border Patrol agents search for the migrants in March 2024, near Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Hannah Ray Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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Meanwhile, in Colorado, state Rep. Brooks said he would support an “expedited system” for processing illegal immigrants who want to become legal residents but would have to leave the country to go through that process.
“Go back south across the border and start the paperwork for them if they want to naturalize,” he said. “But right now, if you are an illegal migrant in this country, you should be removed.”
