Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democrat primary challenger to Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), is standing behind her position that “all deportation is wrong,” including deportations for illegal aliens convicted of the most heinous crimes like child sexual abuse, murder, domestic abuse, and kidnapping.
Chevalier, who is endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D), told Vox Media’s Astead Herndon in a podcast interview that she still supports her prior position that deporting any illegal alien from the United States is wrong.
“That phrase, yes, I still believe that all deportations are wrong,” Chevalier said.
“If we’re saying that all deportation is wrong, that would seem to also include people who were convicted of breaking U.S. criminal law,” Herndon told Chevalier. “Is the deportation of those people wrong?”
In response, Chevalier suggested that deporting an illegal alien convicted of the most violent crime would be “discriminatory” against them.
“The reason I say that is because we have a criminal system, it is imperfect, but it exists, and it is one that if we accept as the process by which we want to engage with these issues, right, 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,” Chevalier said. She continued:
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, 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.
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.
In her campaign ad with Mamdani, the socialist New York City mayor praises Chevalier as a defender and champion of illegal aliens — bragging that she “united families separated by ICE,” among other initiatives.
Among Chevalier’s campaign promises is her vow to help “abolish ICE,” the law enforcement agency within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that is responsible for enforcing federal immigration law throughout the U.S.
“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,” the Democrat’s campaign website reads.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected].
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