A Rochester, New York, man has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing that federal agents tried to intimidate him into silence after he sent a furious email months earlier to the agency's then-acting director.
David Streever, a U.S. citizen, was traveling in Finland in late June when agents from Homeland Security Investigations came to his home and later a hotel seeking to deliver a warning notice, according to the complaint. His wife was the one who received the notice, which told Streever that the email he had sent months earlier was being treated as a threat.
Streever had written to Todd Lyons, then ICE's acting director, in January, after an immigration officer fatally shot Renee Good, a Minneapolis resident, during an anti-ICE demonstration. The three-paragraph message, sent under the subject line "What's next," compared Lyons to Reinhard Heydrich, a senior Nazi official, and called him "a monstrous human being" who, in Streever's words, would never know peace.
The suit was filed Monday in federal court in Washington, D.C., by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, which argues Streever's January email was protected political speech and that agents and their superiors violated his constitutional rights. It names three federal agents who tried to reach him, along with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and ICE officials, as defendants.
Streever said he acted out of anger, not menace. "Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something," he said in a statement, adding that he never imagined the email would bring federal officers to his door or to his hotel at night.
Lawyers for Streever contend the government's own timeline undercuts the idea that he posed any danger. Adam Steinbaugh, a senior FIRE attorney, said that if someone were genuinely threatening an official, authorities would not wait five months to respond. "This is very clearly within the protection of the First Amendment," Steinbaugh said. "It was in the context of political speech." The complaint asks the court to declare the email protected and to bar officials from further efforts to coerce, threaten or retaliate against Streever, arguing the encounters have already pushed him to self-censor.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE investigates all credible threats against its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE director, and that as a matter of policy it does not comment on ongoing investigations. ICE had earlier declined to comment on the warning, citing an active investigation, and did not immediately respond Monday, nor did Mullin's office. Lyons stepped down as acting director at the end of May.
Streever is one of at least two upstate New York residents served with federal warnings in June after publicly criticizing ICE. The lawsuit notes that on the same day agents visited Streever's home, June 23, they also sought out Paigelynne Gonyea, a Syracuse resident, over an Instagram post , approaching her while she was working at a polling place during the New York primary. An agent left her a voicemail saying they wanted to speak about a post they believed she had made that doxxed an ICE agent in January. Gonyea said she declined to step outside to meet the agents because she did not trust them.
A representative for the New York Attorney General's office has said the office is aware of both residents' contacts with federal agents and has been reviewing the encounter that took place at the polling site.
