Darializa Avila Chevalier

Darializa Avila Chevalier is the Democratic and Working Families Party nominee in New York's 13th Congressional District, having defeated incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the June 23, 2026 Democratic primary. A Columbia graduate and doctoral student at CUNY, she has worked as an immigration-rights organizer, a public defender's office investigator and a college instructor. Her campaign emphasizes tenant protections, abolishing ICE and shifting military spending to domestic programs.[1][2][3]

According to her campaign website, Avila Chevalier was raised in a working-class Dominican family; her father is a truck driver and her mother is a case worker.[3] She lived in the Dominican Republic for the first year and a half of her life, then in Florida and, for a time, with her grandmother in Venezuela.[3] She moved to upper Manhattan about 14 years ago to attend Columbia University, from which she holds a bachelor's degree, and says she has lived in the area since; her campaign says she has organized in upper Manhattan since she was a teenager.[1][3]

Avila Chevalier worked as an organizer with Families for Freedom, a group supporting families facing deportation proceedings, and her campaign says she helped win the release of a U.S. permanent resident held in ICE detention for a year and a half.[1][3] She now works as an investigator at a public defender's office in Harlem, which her campaign describes as providing legal aid to people alleging police brutality and collecting evidence for criminal defense.[1][2][3] She is a doctoral student in sociology at the City University of New York, where her campaign says she studies how the U.S. immigration system affects Black immigrants from Latin America, and she has taught college courses, including sociology at CUNY Lehman College and courses at Columbia University and New York University.[1][3] She says she is an active member of UAW Local 2325 and a member of the NYC Democratic Socialists of America, and her campaign says she is endorsed by UAW Region 9A.[3]

In the June 23, 2026 Democratic primary, Avila Chevalier defeated incumbent Rep. Adriano Espaillat, along with Oscar Romero and Theo Chino-Tavarez.[1]

Researched from the cited sources on 2026-10-21.