Alexa Avilés

Immigration

Immigration is the defining issue of Avilés's tenure as chair of the Council's Committee on Immigration. Her positions include:

Strong opposition to the second Trump administration's immigration-enforcement agenda, which she has characterized as cruel and chaotic 1.

Defending New York City's sanctuary policies and opposing efforts to expand ICE access, including her opposition to Mayor Eric Adams's move to allow ICE operations on Rikers Island 2.

Resisting mass deportation, including a declaration that the city would resist participating in it, and casting federal raids and arrests in the district as unlawful 3,4.

Support for local laws and resolutions defending immigrant New Yorkers and for the city's lawsuits against the Trump administration 5.

She has been willing to engage in protest and civil disobedience on the issue, including being present at demonstrations against ICE where mass arrests occurred 6.

Housing

Housing is a central plank of Avilés's agenda, with an emphasis on deep affordability over market-rate development. Her positions include:

Prioritizing deeply affordable and truly affordable housing, with skepticism toward development she views as insufficiently affordable. Her challenger criticized her in 2025 for not supporting more housing construction, while her team pointed to her record securing affordable-housing funding 7.

Securing investment in public housing (NYCHA), including funding for repairs and greater oversight of privately managed units 8.

Holding private NYCHA managers accountable through transparency requirements on eviction rates, repair costs, and repair timelines 9.

Her housing approach reflects a broader democratic-socialist view of housing as a right rather than a market commodity, and it is the area where the moderate critique of her, that she opposes development unless it meets a high affordability bar, has been sharpest 7.

Public safety and policing

Avilés supports a public-safety approach centered on social investment rather than expanded policing. Her positions include:

Reducing crime by addressing root conditions such as poverty and underemployment, and investing in housing, employment, and social services as violence-prevention measures 5.

Arguing that police and jails should not be performing the work of social workers, educators, and health-care providers, and that armed officers are often unfit to respond to mental-health calls 5,10.

Supporting police accountability and anti-discrimination measures, exemplified by her sponsorship of the How Many Stops Act requiring NYPD reporting on stops 11.

Her platform has evolved from earlier "defund"-aligned rhetoric toward a framing of police accountability and reinvestment, though critics continue to associate her with defunding the police, a characterization her campaign has pushed back on 10.

Environmental justice

Environmental justice, particularly in the industrial waterfront areas of her district, is one of Avilés's signature areas. Her positions include:

Requiring cruise ships to use shore power at terminals to limit emissions and reduce traffic in neighborhoods like Red Hook 8.

Reducing truck congestion and pollution in overburdened South Brooklyn communities 12.

Translating air-complaint and environmental programs into multiple languages to expand access for immigrant communities 13.

Budget justice

Avilés has framed city budgeting in terms of "budget justice," opposing cuts to social services. For her first several years in office, she cast protest votes against city budgets she viewed as inadequate, including budgets she said preserved cruel cuts from the Adams administration 14. In June 2025, she voted for the first city budget she felt she could support, saying it went beyond restoring cuts to deliver genuine benefits for working-class New Yorkers 14. Her budget votes became a point of attack from her 2025 moderate challenger, who characterized them as performative 10.

Israel and Gaza

Avilés has taken a strong pro-Palestinian position, repeatedly calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and using the language of opposing genocide and supporting a free Palestine 15. This stance made her a target of pro-Israel political action committees in her 2025 primary, which backed her challenger 15.

The Gaza issue became a significant fault line in her district and the neighboring one, with Avilés casting her ceasefire advocacy as a matter of principle, and her opponents and some constituents objecting to it. The framing of the conflict is itself contested, and the text here attributes the charged language to the respective speakers rather than adopting it.

How her positions fit together

The throughline across Avilés's positions is a consistent democratic-socialist framework: immigration, housing, and safety treated as matters of dignity and rights; redistribution and public investment over market or carceral solutions; and a willingness to use protest and confrontational tactics alongside legislating. Her self-description as a "big-table socialist" captures her effort to pair these movement commitments with coalition-building in an ethnically and ideologically diverse district.

Supporters describe her as a principled progressive delivering for working-class and immigrant communities; critics, including her 2025 moderate challenger, argue she is too ideologically rigid, too focused on protest and national issues, and out of step with constituents' immediate public-safety and development concerns. Both readings are reflected in her competitive 2025 primary, in which she nonetheless won decisively, and in the broader debate over the direction of New York progressivism in the Mamdani era.