An upstate New York resident sued US Immigration and Customs Enforcement for sending federal officers to his house with a warning over an email he sent to the agency's one-time head. David Streever, who's a US citizen, was on a trip to Finland when two officers showed up to his Rochester home in June and presented his wife with a warning notice informing him that the email he sent months earlier was considered a threat, his attorneys said, per the AP. Streever sent the email in January to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, after an immigration officer fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good during an anti-ICE demonstration.
In the email, Streever called Lyons "a monstrous human being" who "will never know peace." He said the agency violated his First Amendment rights in a lawsuit filed Monday in Washington, DC. Streever is one of at least two residents of upstate New York who were served with a federal warning in June in the wake of criticizing ICE online. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is representing Streever and said it filed the lawsuit because Streever's right to free expression was violated. "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."
The entirety of the email, which carried the subject line "What's next": "You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America's [Nazi leader] 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."
ICE didn't comment on Monday. The suit also names Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, whose office released a statement that said: "Any allegation DHS and its components are attempting to 'squash' free speech is categorically FALSE." Federal officials went to Streever's house the same week that officials visited Paigelynne Gonyea, a poll worker, at a voting location during New York's primaries to confront her about a social media post.
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
