A few hours after checking into a hotel in New York City, David Streever received a call from the front desk about a visitor waiting below.

Streever had just returned from a trip to Finland with his daughter. While he was away, Department of Homeland Security agents visited his home in Rochester and spoke with his wife. They left a warning notice stating that ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility handles enforcement of crimes against the United States, including threats against ICE staff. Soon after he arrived back in the country, another agent located him at the hotel.

In a federal lawsuit filed in Washington, DC, Streever maintains he issued no threats. After federal agents killed two US citizens in Minneapolis, he emailed Todd Lyons, then acting ICE director. The message called Lyons a monstrous figure destined to be remembered like Reinhard Heydrich and predicted that even Trump would abandon him, leaving him despised and filled with shame. It spoke of his eventual downfall but framed the outcome as personal awareness of his actions rather than any external punishment.

Streever faced no arrest for the email. The notice simply stated it might violate federal law.

This warning forms part of a wider effort. Over the past year, DHS has pursued people who criticize Trump immigration policies via email and social media, labeling their actions as threats to federal staff or doxxing of agents already known publicly. OPR has launched over 100 probes into alleged doxxing and threats involving ICE, according to recent reports. No criminal charges have resulted in these matters, unlike other recent cases, yet the pattern raises clear concerns for free expression.

Everyone would see an arrest over such an email as a First Amendment breach, but the protection extends beyond arrests to bar government retaliation or pressure, explained Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, who represents Streever.

Steinbaugh remains unsure how DHS found Streever at the hotel, though the agency often requests platform data on critics. Since last August, DHS has issued hundreds of administrative subpoenas to firms including Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta seeking names, emails, phone numbers, and other details of online ICE critics, per The New York Times.

A broader pattern exists of federal officials using questionable legal tools to discourage speech, Steinbaugh added.

ICE agents at David Streever's door. Image courtesy of FIRE.

In a statement to The Verge, DHS spokesperson Lauren Bis said the department avoids comment on active investigations. Any claim that DHS seeks to limit free speech is false, she stated. ICE examines all credible threats to its employees and officers, including those aimed at the ICE Director, and anyone assaulting or threatening officers will face consequences.

The same day agents spoke with Streever's wife, ICE special agents David Brodie and Abbi Henry approached Paigelynne Gonyea at a Syracuse polling place where she worked. They delivered a similar warning notice accusing her of posting personal details about federal officers. Gonyea told The Associated Press she linked the notice to a January social media post about Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent involved in the shooting of Renee Good.

Gonyea said she directed the agents to the polling place after a voicemail mentioned a post believed to be hers on Instagram that allegedly doxxed an ICE agent in January.

DHS has insisted that naming federal agents, even those like Ross whose details are already public, counts as doxxing. Doxxing federal law enforcement officers is a federal crime that endangers their lives and families, Bis told The Associated Press.

Reports indicate DHS often blends criticism with threats. Last year, agents questioned a 67-year-old retiree near Philadelphia about an email sent to Joseph Dernbach, lead ICE prosecutor in a deportation case involving an Afghan refugee referred to as Mr. H in a Washington Post article.

The email urged Dernbach not to play Russian roulette with H's life and to favor caution, noting reasons why governments including the US do not recognize the Taliban and calling for common sense and decency.

Minutes later, the sender received a Google email about a DHS request for account information. Two weeks afterward, two plainclothes DHS agents arrived at his home with a local police officer carrying a printout of the email. The agents acknowledged the message was not illegal but suggested references to Russian roulette and the Taliban might be viewed as threats.

Beyond mixing criticism and threats, DHS asserts that identifying agents endangers lives and explains why agents cover faces and omit law enforcement badges. In March, DHS reported an 8,000 percent rise in threats against agents and over 1,300 percent increase in assaults, figures Bis repeated to The Verge. A statement at the time blamed repeated comparisons of ICE to Nazi groups, secret police, and slave patrols for the assaults.

Everyone would instantly recognize an arrest over such an email as a First Amendment violation.

Aaron Mackey, deputy legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted that certain speech qualifies as threats, such as urging a crowd outside a government building to break in and set it ablaze, but labeling someone a Nazi does not reach that threshold. Calling someone a Nazi represents a longstanding protected epithet under the First Amendment and differs entirely from unprotected incitement, Mackey told The Verge.

An NPR review found far fewer assaults on ICE agents than DHS claims. Yet DHS has cited these figures to support its actions against civilians.

Last October, Border Patrol agent Charles Exum shot Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, during a patrol in Chicago under Operation Midway Blitz. Martinez had trailed Exum's unmarked vehicle in the Brighton Park area, filming on her phone and calling out warnings about the DHS presence.

Exum claimed Martinez rammed his vehicle and later discussed the incident in a Signal chat, according to court records. Martinez survived and faced charges of assaulting and interfering with a federal officer, carrying up to 20 years if convicted. The agency had already been monitoring her, though any link to the shooting remains unclear. Five days prior, a Customs and Border Protection team shared her name, photo, and social media details with Chicago agents, noting she encouraged doxxing by posting about agents.

The government later sought to drop the case, resulting in dismissal with prejudice. DHS then issued a statement describing Martinez as a domestic terrorist.

Internal messages reviewed by The New Yorker indicated her details were checked in DHS databases, though a spokesperson told the publication that DHS runs no database of domestic terrorists while confirming it monitors threats to agents. Congressional Democrats have sought details on such lists without success, per recent Mother Jones reporting.

Regardless of any specific database, officials have labeled critics as terrorists. White House adviser Stephen Miller called Alex Pretti a would-be domestic terrorist after he was killed by agents. Trump designated antifa a domestic terror group last year. This June, a federal judge sentenced a man who shot an agent after a protest at an ICE facility in Texas and imposed lengthy terms on others uninvolved in the shooting, including individuals with no connection to the shooter who had left early or skipped the event, all tied by prosecutors to an antifa cell.

That same month, federal prosecutors in Minnesota charged 15 people with conspiracy to impede a federal officer, solicitation to commit violence, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of federal property, claiming ties to antifa. The lengthy indictment alleges property damage and notes one defendant wrote for an anarchist blog.

These actions together equate dissent with crime, suggesting that criticism or protest of Trump immigration policies endangers federal officers.

Even in cases with targeted violence against officials, the government extends prosecutions far beyond those directly involved, reaching people distant from the events in ways that chill speech, Mackey said. Streever and Gonyea face no charges or prison, yet officials continue efforts to silence them.

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Gaby Del Valle