New York Democratic congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier was knocked down by police on Thursday night as she joined anti-ICE protests following a shooting of a man with his 5-year-old son in the backseat of his car.

Chevalier spoke at the protests, calling for ICE to be abolished, before joining the chaotic scene as angry protesters confronted the police.

“At around 4pm today, there was a shooting involving federal law enforcement agents in the Marble Hill neighborhood of the Bronx. The NYPD was not involved in the incident and was not on scene at the time of the shooting. The individual who was shot is at a nearby hospital and is currently conscious and receiving medical attention,” the NYPD announced on social media Thursday.

The man was later identified as 28-year-old Oscar Belgal, who the Department of Homeland Security labeled an “illegal immigrant” from the Dominican Republic. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin briefed the press on Friday morning and said that Belgal had a history of prior arrests and had fled from ICE officials in the past.

Chevalier, a Mamdani-backed Democratic Socialist with a history of bombastic commentary, released a statement on social media about the incident and called for NYC Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to step down.

“Yesterday, an ICE agent opened fire in Marble Hill. They shot a member of our community in the neck while he was in his car. His five-year-old kid was in a child seat in the back of the car when ICE agents fired at least 7 rounds into it. This was in the middle of the afternoon, with children walking home from school and people heading home from work. Federal agents put every one of them in danger,” Chevalier wrote on X, adding:

When I was in Marble Hill last night I saw NYPD officers rapidly escalating violence. As I was trying to de-escalate, I was shoved to the ground by an officer. I witnessed unmarked law enforcement cars hitting protestors as NYPD officers pushed people out of its path. And instead of condemning ICE’s violence, Police Commissioner Tisch attempted to justify the shooting by reading off our neighbor’s past interactions with police.

The NYPD spent more time protecting a militia that just shot someone than protecting New Yorkers. Last night, the NYPD and Commissioner Tisch violated the spirit, if not the letter, of our sanctuary city policies and fueled the Trump Administration’s attempt to demonize our communities. The NYPD’s Strategic Response Group must be disbanded as quickly as possible, and Commissioner Tisch must step down.

Chevalier knocked out a longtime incumbent, Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), in the Democratic Party primary and is all but guaranteed to win the general election in her Bronx-based district. Chevalier won her race amid a barrage of news headlines covering her inflammatory past statements.

In since-deleted social media posts, she called Joe Biden a “rapist” and “war criminal” during the 2020 election and referred to the U.S. as a “f*cking disgrace.” In other posts, she boasted about using the American flag as a napkin to wipe her dirty hands and attacked white women in interracial relationships as “ugly colonizer women.”

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