‘These People Are Lunatics’: Competitive DSA Candidate Sparks Fury With Answer On Deportations

Screenshot via social media

Astead Herndon, the former New York Times reporter turned Vox podcaster, asked progressive House Candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier this week if she still believed “all deportations are wrong” in a clip that quickly went viral online and sparked derision from both sides of the aisle.

In the clip, Herndon presses Chevalier, a Zohran Mamdani–backed member of the Democratic Socialists of America, on some of her more controversial past tweets. Chevalier is challenging longtime Democratic Party incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat (R-NY) in his upper Manhattan district in a race polls show is a toss-up between the two candidates.

“I still want to ask about two tweets specifically because I think they are relevant to the race. The first is ‘all deportation is wrong.’ Now in Congress, obviously, that comes with a lot of questions about immigration enforcement, and even as Democrats might agree with calls that you have shared to things like ‘abolish ICE,’ I don’t know if they’re necessarily there on things like ‘all deportations is wrong.’ Is that something you still believe?” Herndon asked.

Chevalier replied, “That phrase, yes, I still believe that all deportations are wrong.”

“Even if we’re talking about illegal entry to the country, or someone who may have committed a crime?” Herndon pressed.

Chevalier answered, “So, when we’re talking about things like illegal entry, we’re actually talking about administrative laws, right? We’re not talking about criminal law, right?”

“Let me concede the question of people who have not committed a crime, because I think that that’s not really the question. Like, if we’re saying all deportation is wrong, though, that would seem to also include people who were convicted of breaking U.S. criminal law. Is the deportation of those people wrong?” Herndon offered.

“Yes. And the reason I say that is because we have a criminal system. It isn’t perfect, 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, issues of criminality, what have you — then we need to make sure that it isn’t also discriminatory on the basis of where people were born, right?” Chevalier replied, adding:

To subject someone who has committed a crime to both a criminal system, and then additionally to an immigration system that also detains them in the very same facilities that people who are convicted of criminal convictions are also held, right, and then deported and ripped away from everything they know and love — that is also punishment.

And that is punishment not on the basis of the crime they committed, because they already served their time when they were processed through the criminal system; it is double punishment. And if we truly believe that double jeopardy is something that is unconstitutional, something that’s unethical, something that’s against the principles of equality in this country, we cannot subject people to that on the basis of where they were born.

Centrist journalist and podcaster Josh Barro shared the clip and noted, “These people are lunatics — Chevalier says it is always wrong to deport anyone, even a non-citizen convicted of a serious crime.”

New York Times opinion writer Rotimi Adeoye added, “For the sake of every Democrat running outside deep-blue cities, arguing that people who entered the country illegally and then committed serious felonies like rape or murder should not be deported because of concerns about the criminal justice system is very dumb to say.”

From the right, Fox News’ Guy Benson declared, “The future of the party is arriving.”

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