‘Shameful’: Legal immigrants face uphill battle amid border crisis
Castle Rock, Colo. – Catherine waited in Colombia for nine years before her immigration application was approved, allowing her to join her brothers and sisters in the United States. Two years later, she says she’s still waiting for her husband to be allowed to join her in her new home in Colorado.
She gets upset when she thinks of the tens of thousands who flood across the southern border every month, as unsuspecting as she is.
“If you try to do it the right way, you have to wait a long time. You have to pay fees,” he told Fox News Digital. “And some people cross the border for free and that’s it.”
Castle Rock City Councilman and state Rep. Max Brooks, a Republican, told Fox News Digital, “It’s a shame that there are illegal immigrants here who cut across the front line and don’t go through that process.”
Immigrants seeking asylum in the United States line up at a border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, Jan. 18, 2025. The Southwest Border conflict, which previously peaked at 1.6 million between 1986 and 2000, has since declined for decades. In the year A low of 304,000 in fiscal year 2017, rebounded during Trump’s first term, then rose to new highs during the Biden administration. (Reuters/George Dunnes)
President-elect Trump in Colorado town on land where he promised to eliminate illegal criminal ‘hunting gangs’
Illegal immigration is one of the political issues that helped propel President Donald Trump to victory in the 2024 election. In his inaugural address on Monday, Trump pledged to “end the practice of catch and release” and signed a day-long series of executive actions, including an order authorizing the military to plan to “close the borders” and ending other uses. The CBP One app for processing immigrants.
Trump’s attention turned to Colorado after a viral video showed suspected Venezuelan immigrants holding guns in an Aurora apartment.
Ahead of Inauguration Day, Fox News Digital spoke with Catherine and her sister, Julie, about immigration and Trump’s deportation plans in Castle Rock, a town about 30 miles south of Denver. Both agreed that the country needs tighter border security.
“Although most people come here with the intention of working, growing the city and growing personally, there are many people who are not good people who slip away,” Zuli said. She added that it is important for immigrants to receive an education in civic culture so that we all deserve it.
Zuli and Kathryn feel that the wave of illegal border crossings has slowed the process of legal immigrants.
But David Bier, director of immigration research at the libertarian Cato Institute, pushed back on the idea that illegal immigrants would have any effect on the wait times of legal immigrants because Customs and Border Protection does not process immigration applications.
“He was handled by a different agency.” “So if someone crosses the border illegally, that doesn’t directly affect anyone trying to get through the legal immigration system.”
Bier argued that delays in the system, limits on green cards and strict limits on eligibility make legal immigration “almost impossible.”
“Until proven clean, it’s a conviction. And the only way you can prove you’re clean or eligible to immigrate is if you fall under a very narrow set of circumstances,” he said.
Green cards used to be “straightforward” for spouses and children of legal permanent residents, but now take years, said Zuli, who immigrated to the U.S. from Colombia. “It’s frustrating because the immigration processes are so long,” she said. (Alba Cubas-Fantauzy/Fox News Digital)
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US law currently allows officials to issue up to 675,000 permanent immigrant visas in certain categories each year. American Immigration Council. Priority is given to non-immediate relatives of US citizens (no green card restrictions for spouses, parents or children of adult citizens) and relatives of lawful permanent residents. Skilled workers, highly educated individuals, and people with “special talents” in the arts, sciences, athletics, or other fields may also qualify.
“The exceptions are so narrow that last year, only about 3% of people who tried to immigrate legally got a green card and became a lawful permanent resident,” Bier said.
Efforts to strengthen border security are less likely to deter illegal immigration than to provide incentives — primarily economic — to enter the U.S., he said.
“The benefits of coming to the United States are enormous,” Bier said. “You can make it more expensive for people to come in, but as long as the benefits are moving here, people are going to pay more, they’re going to want any restrictions that are imposed and it’s going to lead to more chaos and chaos at our borders.”
Bier argued that eliminating or increasing immigration issues and making it easier for employers to sponsor workers “would improve a significant portion of the problems we face at the border.”
“When I talk to border guard agents, they want people who come for peaceful reasons, work or family gatherings to apply at the consulate, so they want us to focus on protecting the border from danger, criminals and others. People we want to remove from our country,” he said.
Border Patrol agents search for immigrants near Jacumba Hot Springs, California in March 2024. (Hannah Rae Lambert/Fox News Digital)
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Meanwhile, Colorado state representative Brooks said he supports an “expedited system” for processing illegal immigrants who want to become legal residents but must leave the country to go through that process.
“Bring them back across the southern border and start the papers if they want to get citizenship,” he said. But now, if you are an illegal immigrant in this country, you must be removed.