Another Democrat is defending illegal immigration, this time arguing that even murderers and rapists should be permitted to remain in the country. Darializa Avila Chevalier is a member of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America currently running in the Democratic congressional primary to replace U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). In a recent podcast interview, Chevalier doubled down on her previous assertion that “all deportations are wrong.”

“The reason I say that is because we have a criminal system, it is imperfect, but it exists,” Chevalier said, when asked if she opposed even the deportation of violent offenders like murderers and child rapists. “It is one that if we accept as the process by which we want to engage with these issues, the issues of harm, the issues of criminality ... then we need to make sure that it is one that isn’t also discriminatory on the basis of where people were born.”

“To subject someone who has committed a crime to both a criminal system but also an immigration system that also detains them in the very same facilities that criminal detainees ... people who are convicted of criminal convictions are also held, and then deported and ripped away from everything they know and love,” the Democratic Socialist continued, “that is also a punishment and that is a punishment not on the basis of the crime they committed, because they already served their time ... it is double punishment.” She added, “If we truly believe that double jeopardy is something that is unconstitutional, something that is unethical, something that is against the principles of equality in this country, we cannot subject people to that on the basis of where they were born.”

Chevalier is the daughter of Dominican immigrant parents and has been endorsed by the Ugandan-born Muslim socialist Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani (D). She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in “Middle East studies” and is currently a doctoral student at City University of New York, where she is studying “the ways Black immigrants from Latin America are impacted by the US criminal system and deportation.”

As a “community organizer,” Chevalier participated in pro-Palestine rallies throughout New York City and has organized protests and events opposing deportations and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2014, Chevalier briefly served as a teacher at a school in Palestine, where she said she “was essentially living in the heart of the occupation and seeing the way that Palestinians had to navigate all these systems…” She said that, upon returning to the U.S., she saw similarities in “systems of policing, of deportation, of the controlling of our movement.”

Chevalier has cited as political influences Marxist Communist Party USA (CPUSA) activist Angela Davis and Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army activist Assata Shakur, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 1977 for killing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster; she escaped from prison in 1979 and was granted political asylum in Cuba in 1984, where she described communist Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as a “hero of the oppressed.” Chevalier’s congressional campaign has been endorsed by Mamdani, ultra-progressive former congressman Jamaal Bowman (D), and far-left political commentator and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker. The socialist-aligned Broadway Democrats, however, refused to endorse Chevalier, citing her “point-blank” refusal to condemn Hamas following the paramilitary organization’s attack against Israel in October 2023.

On her campaign website, Chevalier says that one of her political goals is to “abolish ICE and the deportation machine.” Her website says, “This agency exists to control our communities, not to keep us safe. It was created in 2002: we can return to a world where it does not exist.” She has also pledged to extend mass amnesty to illegal immigrants and use taxpayer funds to pay for immigration lawyers for illegal immigrants.

In comments to The Washington Stand, Lora Ries, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, noted that Chevalier “previously posted that the U.S. is a ‘f****** disgrace.’ Why does the Left insist all migrants have a right to enter such a country and cannot leave such a country? It’s past time such fraudulent politicians are called out on this glaring inconsistency.” She continued, “Preventing deportations is about political power. These politicians depend on deportable aliens to obtain and keep political power through illegal voting, generating ballots, and Census headcounts for congressional districts and presidential electoral college votes. Journalists need to thoroughly question these politicians on this.”

“Chevalier called criminal and immigration consequences double jeopardy. Double jeopardy prevents a person from facing criminal prosecution for the same crime twice,” Ries observed. “Immigration law is civil — not criminal — law. As such, a person facing criminal and civil consequences for a crime is not facing double jeopardy. She either doesn’t know what she is talking about or she’s knowingly lying to the public so that they’ll repeat the lie.”

In a recent interview, former ICE chief and current Border Czar Tom Homan, who has been tasked with managing President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign, shared that the majority of illegal immigrants currently being arrested by ICE are criminals. “We say a criminal is those who have a criminal conviction or pending criminal charges, which means we found them in the jail cell, locked in a jail cell, which means they’re probably not a choir boy, right?” he quipped.

Previously, when the Trump administration was operating under a “worst of the worst” agenda, the share of illegal immigrants arrested and detained who had criminal records or criminal charges was 70%. That share has fallen as the administration shifts towards broader enforcement, but it still remains high. “Right now, I think we’re about 64%. But you know what? That’s a good number. For the people who say, ‘Well, you need to arrest everybody,’ I tell them, ‘Look, let’s say 60-40.’ I think 60% criminal, 40% non-criminal is a good mix,” Homan said. He warned, however, “But everybody’s on the table.”

Criminals arrested by ICE have been charged with crimes including homicide, voluntary manslaughter, rape, sexual assault, sexual battery, child rape, lewd or lascivious acts with a child, child cruelty, sex offenses against children, child molestation, possession and creation of child pornography, kidnapping, false imprisonment, assault, terrorism, strangulation, domestic violence, automobile theft, aircraft theft, burglary, armed robbery, driving under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, and a host of weapons-related and drug-related offenses, in addition to other crimes.