Darializa Avila Chevalier, a self-styled socialist who is overwhelmingly favored to win election to the U.S. House of Representatives in New York’s 13th Congressional District in November, called for an illegal alien who was shot by federal immigration agents in New York City on Friday to remain in the United States despite documented gang ties and a lengthy criminal record.
Chevalier made the comments while speaking with CNN’s Erin Burnett on a shooting that took place earlier in the day, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted a targeted enforcement operation in New York City’s Marble Hill neighborhood. Oscar Belgal, a Dominican national, was shot and wounded by agents as they attempted to take him into custody.
According to federal officials, agents blocked the vehicle and ordered Belgal to exit; he refused, accelerated, struck two ICE vehicles, and appeared to drive toward officers, at which point they fired roughly seven rounds in self-defense. Belgal sustained a superficial wound and was taken into custody after hospital treatment.
Belgal had entered the United States illegally at an unknown date and location. His record includes a conviction for fourth-degree grand larceny involving property taken from a person, for which he received five years of probation in April 2025 after pleading guilty to a reduced charge stemming from a December 2023 arrest.
In that incident, according to the criminal complaint, he pointed a gun at two people in a car, demanded jewelry and cash, and threatened to shoot them. He also has faced prior arrests for first-degree robbery while in possession of a weapon, criminal sale of a controlled substance, possession of stolen property, and assault.
Pending drug charges from 2025 involve alleged sales of fentanyl, heroin, and cocaine to an undercover officer, for which he was granted supervised release. Federal authorities say he has associations with the Trinitarios gang — the same gang linked to the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer — and was the target of a Homeland Security Investigations probe into that incident. He had previously fled from an arrest attempt in September.
The NYPD arrested him on December 7, 2023, though he was released just days later due to the state’s “sanctuary” policies.
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In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, Chevalier joined far-left activists at the scene and attempted to place herself between protesters and local police officers. On CNN’s “OutFront,” host Erin Burnett asked her about Belgal’s lengthy criminal record, as well as his ties and his connection to the CBP shooting investigation, and whether an individual like him should be allowed to remain in the United States.
“That is an issue of the criminal courts, right? If… we have a criminal justice system in this country, and it does not make sense to me that we would subject somebody to the double jeopardy of being tried by our criminal courts and then, again, subjected to the cruelty of what we just saw yesterday, by another law enforcement agency like ICE. The additional punishment being here, of course, deportation and permanent separation from your family,” Chevalier responded.
Burnett also asked about the NYPD’s investigations of Belgal and Chevalier’s calls for NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch to resign. “I’m simply echoing what the folks in my district want to see and have called for. That is my role, right? As someone who was trusted by this community to represent them as a Democratic nominee for Congress, and I will continue to make those calls, because it is what is right, and it is what our community is calling for,” the soon-to-be congresswoman said.
“To me, I was honestly disgusted to hear the way that the Commissioner refused to address and condemn ICE for its actions, refused to address, directly, the fact that, sanctuary policy was being violated, if not in — if — in spirit, if not in letter, right? By the fact that this was not immediately investigated and addressed. She herself could have taken the moment to condemn it, to remind folks that this is a sanctuary city. But she didn’t. And, instead, she chose to demonize our neighbors, right,” she added.
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[ H/T Trending Politics ]
