Lefty firebrand Darializa Avila Chevalier refused to say whether convicted murderers should be put behind bars — when pressed about her hypocrisy of being a prison abolitionist but also calling for ICE agents to be jailed.
Chevalier, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s hand-picked Democratic Party candidate for New York’s 13th congressional district, could only offer up a word salad in an interview with Vanity Fair Friday when the reporter repeatedly pushed for the democratic socialist’s answer over what to do with murderers if all jails and prisons were removed.
“I’m just curious about now, now that you’re going to become a lawmaker, do you believe that someone who is convicted of murder with intent should be physically confined to protect the public?” the reporter asked.
“But that is what happens in the day-to-day,” Chevalier responded.
“What I argue as someone who deeply cares about ending violence in our communities is that if we don’t begin the process now of building this world where we are proactive in preventing violence instead of reactive, once the violence has already happened, then we’re never going to get to that world.”
The back-and-forth started on the outlet’s podcast when the reporter brought up the calls from Chevalier for police to arrest and lock up the immigration officer who shot an illegal Dominican migrant despite calling for all jails and prisons to be eliminated.
“I see a bit of a contradiction between wanting the shooter apprehended and your stance on prison abolition,” the outlet pressed. “Where is the shooter going if not to jail?”
“You know, abolition is a process and vision, right?” Chevalier said, starting her meandering response. “It is the idea that we are constructing a world where a shooting like that doesn’t happen to begin with.
“And so when I talk about abolishing ICE, the point is that we are taking away the condition for this to ever happen again. We are taking these arms off the street. We are taking these people away from the power to do that to our communities. Right. And we are reinvesting those resources into things that actually make our communities more safe.”
In the days after Oscar Belgal, 28, was shot by an ICE agent in The Bronx earlier this month, Chevalier publicly called for the immigration official to be arrested.
