A man from upstate New York has taken ICE to court, claiming the federal immigration agency trampled on his free speech rights after it dispatched officers to his home in response to a strongly worded email he had sent to the agency’s former leader.
David Streever, a U.S. citizen from Rochester, was traveling abroad in Finland when two federal officers arrived at his home in June and handed his wife a warning notice. The notice stated that an email Streever had written several months earlier was being treated as a threat, according to his legal team. Streever had composed the email in January, addressing it to Todd Lyons, who was at the time serving as ICE’s acting director. The email was written following the fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good by an immigration officer during a demonstration against ICE.
In the message, Streever referred to Lyons as “a monstrous human being” who “will never know peace.” On Monday, Streever filed a lawsuit in Washington D.C. arguing that ICE’s response to that email was a violation of his First Amendment protections.
The full three-paragraph email, with the subject line “What’s next,” also drew a comparison to a Nazi Germany leader: “You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher.
“The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall. Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness.
“You will never know peace. You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself. But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.”
Streever is among at least two upstate New York residents who received federal warning visits in June following online criticism of ICE. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is handling Streever’s legal representation and says the lawsuit was filed because his right to free expression was infringed upon.
“This is very clearly within the protection of the First Amendment,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the foundation. “It was in the context of political speech.”
When Streever returned from Finland and was staying at a hotel in New York City, federal agents also attempted to confront him there, but hotel staff turned them away, according to Steinbaugh.
The lawsuit also names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin as a defendant. Neither ICE nor Mullin’s office offered an immediate response to the filing on Monday. ICE had previously declined to comment on the warning issued to Streever, saying an investigation was ongoing.
In a statement released last week, ICE said: “ICE investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director.”
Federal officials paid a visit to Streever’s home during the same week they approached Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker, at a voting location during New York’s primary elections — confronting her about a social media post she had made.
Gonyea believes the federal visit was connected to a post she made in January in which she wrote “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted,” alongside a photo of Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good. Ross had already been publicly identified by news outlets at that point.
Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, presented a different social media post from Gonyea — one in which Bis alleged Gonyea had shared the home address of an ICE officer. Part of that post was blacked out. Bis stated in June that Gonyea “committed a federal crime by posting the address of an ICE law enforcement officer online” and warned that “if you doxx our officers, we will investigate you, and you will be brought to justice.”
A representative from the New York Attorney General’s Office has confirmed the office is aware of both residents’ encounters with federal agents and has said it has been reviewing the interaction between Gonyea and federal officers that occurred at the polling location.
