A Rochester man said Tuesday that federal officers left a warning for him at his home while he was traveling abroad after an email he sent criticizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement was deemed threatening, his lawyer told The Associated Press.
David Streever said he was in Finland last week when two officers showed up at his home and handed his wife a notice saying an email he sent in January was considered a threat, attorney Adam Steinbaugh of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told The Associated Press. Streever sent the email to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, after an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, Steinbaugh said.
Steinbaugh quoted passages from the email in which Streever called Lyons “a monstrous human being” who “will never know peace” and wrote, “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,” according to Steinbaugh. Federal officers also tried to confront Streever at a New York City hotel after he returned from Finland, but hotel staff turned them away, Steinbaugh said.
Steinbaugh said the email is protected political speech and does not meet the legal standard for a true threat. “A true threat is a serious expression of an intent to commit violence. This email doesn’t even come close,” he told The Associated Press.
Streever said he was shocked that federal officers came to his home. “Like many Americans, I was deeply upset after the shootings in Minnesota and I felt compelled to do something,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Writing a letter to the head of ICE seemed like the least I could do to express my sense of outrage. I never dreamed it would lead to a knock on my door by federal officers.”
ICE said in a statement to The Associated Press that it “investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director.” The warning to Streever came the same week that poll worker Paigelynne Gonyea of Syracuse said she was questioned by federal officers at a voting site over a social media post about the ICE officer who killed Good. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis shared an image of a different post by Gonyea and said she “committed a federal crime by posting the address of an ICE law enforcement officer online,” according to The Associated Press.
Free-speech groups including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and the American Civil Liberties Union have said the incidents raise concerns about privacy and free expression. Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, told The Associated Press that the First Amendment protects the right to criticize the government and that people should not be tracked down by federal agents for expressing frustration with government actions.
The government has not publicly provided a fuller explanation of why Streever’s email was treated as a threat.
Jon Ross Myers is the executive editor and publisher of the Mississippi News Network, Mississippi's largest digital only media company. He can be reached at editor@tippahnews.com
