As demonstrations erupted across the country after ICE agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January, Rochester resident David Streever lodged his protest in an email to the agency's leader. His rebuke likened the official to a notorious Nazi.
It prompted ICE agents to visit his home, as well as a written warning to "discontinue" his criticism and a second visit by agents when Streever made a later stop in New York City.
In a preliminary ruling last week, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras said the government threats detailed in court papers likely violated Streever’s First Amendment right to free speech. The District of Columbia judge temporarily barred the government from making good on its threats to prosecute Streever and from issuing similar threats in the future.
The judge denied the government’s request to dismiss Streever's lawsuit challenging the ICE actions, but granted the Trump administration a 14-day window to file an appeal. The 43-page ruling also delivered a sharp rebuke of its own to the agency, which faces lawsuits across the country for its alleged rough treatment of protesters and critics, including the fatal January shootings of protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
“Mr. Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be,” Contreras wrote. “Because Defendants have likely infringed on that right by threatening Mr. Streever that if he did not discontinue his criticism of government officials he might be prosecuted, the court will grant Mr. Streever a limited preliminary injunction to preserve his ability to exercise his constitutional rights while this case proceeds.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, of which ICE is a part, issued a statement denying that the government had attempted to “squash” free speech. It said ICE investigates all credible threats directed at agency staffers, and said it had experienced a surge in threats against its personnel. The statement did not state whether ICE would file an appeal.
Streever, represented by the First Amendment group FIRE, or the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said in a statement the court ruling affirmed what he knew all along: “I am permitted to speak my conscience in the United States of America, including when I criticize government officials.”
He added: “While I wish this ordeal hadn’t happened, hopefully this incident will serve as a reminder that the First Amendment protects us all.”
Streever’s email was a three-paragraph missive directed at then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. The email described Lyons as a “monstrous human being” who will go down in history “as America’s Reinhard Heydrich,” a high-ranking Nazi regarded as a principal architect of the Holocaust.
“The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall,” Streever wrote. “Even [President Donald] 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.”
It closed with more predictions: “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.”
Contreras wrote that the government “wisely” does not contest that the email constitutes protected expression. The judge said the email “addressed salient political decisions to a government official,” an area where the First Amendment’s speech protections reach their “zenith.”
He added: “Although Mr. Streever’s email was not kind, and may not have been particularly productive, it was a far cry” from a threat of violence “sufficient for the email to shed its First Amendment protections.”
Where the government objects, the judge wrote, is whether its response constitutes coercion. On that question, the judge ruled, Streever is likely to succeed in showing that ICE “engaged in coercion, rather than persuasion.”
The government, Contreras wrote, did not “ask kindly if Mr. Streever would tone down his rhetoric. It dispatched agents to his home for an unannounced visit where they delivered a ‘WARNING NOTICE.’”
While the notice requested that Streever “discontinue” his political expression, Contreras wrote, it characterized that speech as potentially violating federal law, which “could subject [him] to both federal and state prosecution.”
The government’s warning “practically shouts that Mr. Streever may be prosecuted if he continues to engage in his political speech,” constituting an “adverse government action” under the First Amendment, the judge rote.
On that basis, the judge ruled Streever is likely to succeed on the merits of his lawsuit.
Five months after Streever sent the email, ICE officials visited his home in Rochester, according to the court filings. Streever was away in Europe, so the agents left the warning letter with his wife, the Rev. Hilary Streever. The warning letter included this: ICE “is requesting that you promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior."
On Streever’s return journey from Europe, ICE attempted to speak with Streever at a hotel in New York City, to no avail, according to the court filings. Agents called Streever twice but never spoke with him. An ICE agent later wrote that its investigation of Streever was “closed” and that it didn’t contemplate any further inquiry into Streever’s email.
But “no one told Mr. Streever,” Contreras wrote. He filed his lawsuit against the government on July 6.
“ICE knowingly pursued an American citizen for criticizing his government — speech that is at the heart of the First Amendment,” FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh said in a statement on the group’s website. “Ominous letters warning people their speech might land them in prison are meant to coerce people into silence, and that’s not how the First Amendment works.”
