When two Americans were killed by federal agents during the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis this year, David Streever was filled with outrage. On Jan. 26, the Upstate New York resident wrote a brief, caustic email to Todd M. Lyons, then acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being” and “America’s Reinhard Heydrich,” a reference to a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany who oversaw the regime’s secret police. He says he never dreamed the note would lead to a knock on his own door.
About five months later, Department of Homeland Security agents came to Streever’s house in Rochester, New York, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court. Streever wasn’t home, but DHS tracked him to a hotel in New York City where he and his 7-year-old daughter were staying overnight after returning from a trip to Finland.
Agents told the hotel front desk they were looking for him, left repeated voicemails and sought to have him sign an unusual warning notice saying his email could be a crime.
In his lawsuit against DHS officials, Streever says the department’s actions violate the First Amendment, which broadly protects freedom of speech and individual expression.
“Americans have a clear right to criticize government officials,” said JT Morris, deputy director of litigation at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the nonprofit group representing Streever.
“When federal agents come to your door and ask you to stop engaging in political speech,” Morris said, it “is an act of intimidation that the Constitution doesn’t tolerate.”
Streever declined an interview through his lawyers but said in a statement that he never expected his email to draw attention from law enforcement.
“I cherish our right to speak openly about issues of public concern,” the statement said. “I hope others will not be discouraged from peacefully expressing their views, even when those views are critical of the government.”
When asked about Streever’s case, a DHS spokesperson said it “investigates all credible threats toward its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director.” The department declined to say why it considered Streever’s email a credible threat or how many people have received similar warning notices.
But the department has tracked down others critical of its operations, according to Paigelynne Gonyea, an online influencer who also lives in Upstate New York and was presented with the same form last month.
Gonyea has been a vocal critic of ICE’s high-profile enforcement operation in Minnesota, which included the arrest of tens of thousands of immigrants and the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens who were protesting the detention campaign.
DHS accused Gonyea of revealing an ICE agent’s address online, something Gonyea denies. The department has not provided evidence for its allegation. A DHS spokesperson said Gonyea had “committed a federal crime” that puts the lives of federal law enforcement officers in danger.
Civil liberties experts said the warning notices delivered to Streever and Gonyea mark a new development in a broader campaign by DHS to track and intimidate its critics. Those tactics include the use of administrative subpoenas to unmask anonymous critics, experts said, along with threats to prosecute people who exercise their rights to document law enforcement operations.
Last year, DHS agents visited the home of a Pennsylvania man after he emailed a federal prosecutor a plea to stop the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker. The government also sought the contents of the man’s Google account using an administrative subpoena.
The Trump administration’s conduct represents a marked shift, said Aaron Mackey, deputy legal director at the Electronic Frontier Federation. Previous administrations generally adopted a hands-off approach to critics unless a person made an actual threat to a public official or otherwise did something illegal, he said.
“They don’t send ICE agents to people’s doors,” Mackey said. “They don’t send law enforcement to demand information from internet and social media companies.”
Meanwhile, courts have affirmed that harsh, caustic and unpleasant criticism of the government is a critical part of freedom of expression. “The First Amendment protects people’s ability to essentially be jerks to public officials,” Mackey said.
Gonyea, 40, was working at a polling station on June 23, the day of the New York primary, when two DHS agents arrived looking for her. They had a folder containing information on her, she said, and repeatedly asked her to sign the warning notice. She refused.
On Jan. 8, Gonyea posted on her Instagram account that the Minnesota Star Tribune had identified Jonathan Ross as the ICE agent who fatally shot Good. “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!” Gonyea wrote.
There are no posts on Gonyea’s Instagram account that reveal other information about Ross, such as his address, and she said she had not deleted such a post.
The unsigned warning notice from ICE is now affixed to Gonyea’s fridge, and she has posted about her experience on Instagram. Her story was first reported by Syracuse.com.
The experience has been “kind of surreal,” Gonyea said. “Even after all this is over, the First Amendment is something I will continue fighting for.”
Since Gonyea went public about her encounter with DHS, she said, she has heard from six other people around the country — including Streever — who say they also received similar visits from federal agents in recent months. The visits were related to emails the people had sent to public officials, comments they made online or alleged doxing, Gonyea said, adding that nearly all of the other people were not comfortable speaking to a reporter about their experience.
The form delivered to Streever and Gonyea advises recipients that they may have violated a federal law making it a crime to threaten a federal official with harm or reveal an official’s personal information with threatening intent.
Streever’s email to Lyons “doesn’t come anywhere close” to the conduct prohibited by the statute, said Nathan Freed Wessler, a deputy director at the American Civil Liberties Union.
What’s more, to “pound on someone’s door and say sign this acknowledgment” is “a really irregular procedure,” Freed Wessler added. It’s an “escalation coming out of an administration that has already broken through numerous norms and legal behavior against retaliation for people’s protected speech.”
Streever’s lawsuit says that the government’s actions have made him afraid to express his views and that he seeks an injunction to prevent DHS from engaging in any further “acts of coercion and retaliation” against him.
The night after DHS tracked Streever and his daughter to a New York City hotel, the duo boarded an Amtrak train to return home to Rochester. Before arriving at Penn Station, Streever prepared his 7-year-old for the possibility that federal agents might confront them on their journey, the lawsuit says.
His daughter began to cry. “I don’t want them to kill you,” she told her father.
correctionA previous version of this article incorrectly said that Paigelynne Gonyea was working as a volunteer at a polling station on June 23. It was a paid position.
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