A federal ICE First Amendment lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., has exposed how Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigated a New York man for sending an angry email to the agency’s then-acting director, and the government’s own court filings now confirm that the email was constitutionally protected political speech.
The claimant, David Streever, is a resident of Greece, a suburb of Rochester, New York. His lawsuit names Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, senior ICE officials, and three federal agents who attempted to contact him as defendants.
The ICE First Amendment Lawsuit: What the Government Concedes
On 24 January, DHS agents fatally shot Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse and US citizen, during a protest in Minneapolis. (The original article placed the shooting on 26 January; the earlier date is drawn from testimony reported by ABC30 and other outlets.) Two days after that shooting, Streever sent an email to Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director. He called Lyons ‘a monstrous human being,’ compared him to Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, and predicted Lyons would be haunted by ‘shame at your own pathetic weakness’ in defending the shooting ‘until your last day on Earth.’
Streever did not threaten violence. Nevertheless, Brent Goodwin, assistant director for investigations at ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), claims in an August 5 declaration that the email ‘had potential threatening undertones’ and ‘potentially present[ed] a safety concern.’ Because ‘ICE OPR did not have any information about Mr. Streever when the email came in,’ Goodwin says it ‘determined that it needed to conduct an ICE investigation.’
Seeking dismissal of the claim, the government’s lawyers none the less concede that Streever’s email ‘put words to his disagreements with a current administration official.’ That concession amounts to an admission that the investigation was triggered by speech the First Amendment protects.
A Warning Notice, an Airport Intercept, and an Allegation of Chilling Effect
ICE’s response did not come swiftly. Five months after receiving Streever’s email, two agents travelled to his home in Greece and left a ‘WARNING NOTICE‘ with his wife on 23 June. The document stated: ‘YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.’ It cited two statutes covering threats against federal officials and the disclosure of restricted personal information about them with intent to intimidate, and stated that ICE had ‘reason to believe’ the email ‘may constitute a violation of Title 18 of the United States Code,’ a title encompassing more than 1,500 offences. Streever had not violated either of the cited provisions.
The notice demanded that Streever ‘promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior,’ and warned that ‘receipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above.’
On 25 June, DHS agents attempted to intercept Streever at John F. Kennedy International Airport as he returned from Finland with his seven-year-old daughter. They also made repeated attempts to contact him by telephone and in person at the New York hotel where he stayed that night. The case was closed on 30 June after ICE declared all ‘investigative leads’ had been ‘exhausted,’ even though agents had never managed to interview Streever to determine ‘whether or not [he] presented a threat,’ which Goodwin identifies as the object of the investigation.
The lawsuit alleges the agents’ conduct caused Streever to self-censor his views. Adam Steinbaugh, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) attorney representing him, is unequivocal: ‘This is very clearly within the protection of the First Amendment. It was in the context of political speech,’ he told PBS NewsHour.
Streever is not alone. He is one of at least two upstate New York residents served with a federal warning notice in June following online criticism of ICE. The agency is also reported to operate a round-the-clock digital monitoring operation tracking online speech for further targets.
The Minneapolis shooting that prompted Streever’s email has itself become the subject of a separate accountability question. Todd Lyons subsequently told Congress that two officers involved in the shooting appeared to have given inaccurate testimony and had been placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation, with the US attorney’s office actively examining the matter, according to the BBC. The broader DHS enforcement surge in Minnesota lasted more than two months and resulted in more than 4,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants before it was wound down.
Four decades ago, the Supreme Court of the United States described the freedom to criticise police conduct without fear of arrest as ‘one of the principal characteristics by which we distinguish a free nation from a police state.’ Whether the court hearing Streever’s ICE First Amendment lawsuit applies that principle to the facts here will be the case’s defining question. A ruling on the government’s dismissal motion is the first procedural marker to watch.
