DSA candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier: ICE shooting suspect's record 'doesn't even matter'

Darializa Avila Chevalier, the DSA-backed Democratic candidate for New York's 13th Congressional District, said it “doesn't even matter” that the immigrant wounded by federal agents in the Bronx has a violent criminal record. In an interview with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker, she argued that Oscar Belgal was simply protecting his 5-year-old son when he tried to drive away from ICE agents on Thursday. She called for Belgal's release and closed by saying ICE should be abolished.

Belgal, 28, a reputed member of the Trinitarios street gang, had just picked up his son in the Marble Hill neighborhood shortly after 4 p.m. when plainclothes ICE agents swarmed his SUV and fired into the vehicle as he tried to pull away, wounding him in the neck. Authorities said he entered the United States illegally in 2022 and has a lengthy record, including a 2023 armed robbery conviction and a 2025 arrest for allegedly selling fentanyl, cocaine and heroin. He is being held in a federal lockup in Brooklyn.

Chevalier, according to the New York Post, accused Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch of “villainizing” Belgal instead of condemning ICE or the shooting, and repeated her earlier demand that Tisch step down. “Put yourself in Oscar's shoes,” she told Piker, describing masked men approaching a car with a child inside. Tisch and Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a fellow DSA member, have both denounced the federal operation and said the NYPD was neither involved nor notified in advance.

Mamdani has also called for Belgal's release and suggested he was an ordinary New Yorker, a position Chevalier echoed. Tenants at Belgal's former Washington Heights apartment building told the Post he terrorized neighbors with a machete, with one resident calling him “a menace to society.” The shooting itself rattled the Bronx neighborhood and set off large protests demanding that federal immigration agents leave the city.

Stu Smith, an investigative analyst at the Manhattan Institute, wrote on X that the episode offered “a fascinating glimpse into DSA-style co-governance in action,” pointing to tensions inside the Mamdani administration and the movement's abolitionist stance. The dispute now sits at the center of a congressional race in the 13th District, where Chevalier is seeking the Democratic nomination while federal and city officials remain at odds over the raid.