New York Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier was knocked down by police Thursday night after joining anti-ICE protests that erupted following a shooting involving federal agents in the Bronx.
The protests broke out after a man was shot while his 5-year-old son sat in the backseat of his car. Chevalier spoke at the demonstrations, calling for ICE to be abolished, before joining the chaotic scene as angry protesters confronted police.
The NYPD addressed the shooting in a social media post Thursday.
“At around 4pm today, there was a shooting involving federal law enforcement agents in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx. The NYPD was not involved in the incident and was not on scene at the time of the shooting. The individual who was shot is at a nearby hospital and is currently conscious and receiving medical attention,” the department said.
The man was later identified as 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, whom the Department of Homeland Security labeled an “illegal immigrant” from the Dominican Republic. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin briefed the press Friday morning and said Belgal had a history of prior arrests and had fled from ICE officials in the past.
Chevalier, a Mamdani-backed Democratic Socialist with a history of bombastic commentary, took to social media to weigh in on the incident and call for NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to step down.
“Yesterday, an ICE agent opened fire in Marble Hill. They shot a member of our community in the neck while he was in his car. His five-year-old kid was in a child seat in the back of the car when ICE agents fired at least 7 rounds into it,” Chevalier wrote on X.
She also described her own run-in with police at the protest.
“When I was in Marble Hill last night I saw NYPD officers rapidly escalating violence. As I was trying to de-escalate, I was shoved to the ground by an officer,” she wrote. “I witnessed unmarked law enforcement cars hitting protestors as NYPD officers pushed people out of its path.”
Chevalier then turned her fire on Tisch, accusing the commissioner of trying to justify the shooting by reading off Belgal’s past interactions with police.
“The NYPD spent more time protecting a militia that just shot someone than protecting New Yorkers,” she wrote. “Last night, the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch violated the spirit, if not the letter, of our sanctuary city policies and fueled the Trump Administration’s attempt to demonize our communities.”
She concluded by demanding that the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group be disbanded “as quickly as possible” and that Tisch step down.
Chevalier ousted longtime incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., in the Democratic primary and is all but guaranteed to win the general election in her Bronx-based district.
Her primary victory came amid a barrage of headlines covering her inflammatory past statements.
In since-deleted social media posts, Chevalier called Joe Biden a “rapist” and “war criminal” during the 2020 election and referred to the U.S. as a “f*cking disgrace.”
In other posts, she boasted about using the American flag as a napkin to wipe her dirty hands and attacked white women in interracial relationships as “ugly colonizer women.”
Now, the soon-to-be likely congresswoman is squarely at odds with the NYPD, after being shoved to the ground amid a protest she helped fuel.
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