First Amendment

ICE Admits It Investigated a Critic Based on Constitutionally Protected Speech

The agency’s attempt to intimidate David Streever is at the center of a First Amendment case.

Jacob Sullum | 8.19.2026 12:01 AM

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David Streever and two ICE agents at his door (Jeffrey Carlson/Crimson Dawn Media/FIRE)

Last June, two investigators employed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed up at David Streever's house in Rochester, New York. Streever was not home, so they left him a note.

That note, presented as an official warning from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is at the center of a First Amendment lawsuit that Streever filed last month, alleging that ICE agents investigated and threatened him based on his constitutionally protected criticism of their boss. This month, the government responded to Streever's lawsuit, confirming his allegations while attempting to rebut them.

On January 26, two days after DHS agents fatally shot Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti, Streever sent an angry email to Todd Lyons, then the acting ICE director. Streever called Lyons "a monstrous human being," likened him to the genocidal Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, and predicted that he would be haunted by........

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