On January 26, 2026, after federal immigration officers in Minneapolis fatally shot two U.S. citizens who were observing an enforcement operation, a Rochester, New York, resident named David Streever sent an angry email to the government address of then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. Titled “What's next,” it called Lyons a “monstrous human being” who would “go down in history as America's Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher,” a reference to the Nazi official who organized the Holocaust.
About five months later, the government came looking for him. While Streever was in Finland on vacation with his 7-year-old daughter in late June, Homeland Security Investigations agents worked to track him down, and staked out his New York City hotel as he returned from the trip. They left him a document headed “WARNING NOTICE,” declaring in bold that he “MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.”
On July 6, 2026, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) sued the Department of Homeland Security in federal court in Washington, D.C., on Streever's behalf. The suit argues that the First Amendment protects the right to criticize police and government officials, and that DHS “is actively threatening that freedom, tracking down and retaliating against speakers like Plaintiff David Streever because he exercised his fundamental right to criticize one of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in the United States.” Sending armed federal agents to confront a citizen over a harshly worded email is the kind of official retaliation for protected speech that the First Amendment was written to forbid (see A Judge Permanently Bars the Administration From Threatening Protesters' Permits Over '8647' Flags Near the National Mall).
Update (September 16, 2026): On September 15, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington granted Streever a preliminary injunction in part. The court said it would vacate the warning notice for now, barred DHS from relying on the notice or Streever's January email in any future prosecution or investigative demand, and barred similar warnings. “The notice practically shouts that Mr. Streever may be prosecuted if he continues to engage in his political speech,” Contreras wrote. “Mr. Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be.” NPR reported the government did not argue the email was a violent threat.
The ruling is limited. At the government's request, Contreras stayed it for fourteen days to allow an appeal, and he did not let Streever challenge the underlying investigation, which ICE says it closed in June. Streever said, “I'm deeply relieved that the court affirmed what I knew all along: that I am permitted to speak my conscience in the United States of America, including when I criticize government officials.”