ICE was sued after making house calls to online critics

A few hours after arriving at a hotel in New York City, David Stryver was awakened by a call from the front desk saying someone was looking for him.

Stryver had just arrived on a return flight from Finland, where he had vacationed with his daughter. Although Stryver didn’t know it yet, while he was away, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents came to his home in Rochester and spoke to his wife. They dropped a “Warning Notice,” which informed Striefer that ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is “responsible for enforcing crimes against the United States,” including “threats against ICE employees.” Then, once he arrived on American soil, another agent tracked him down to the hotel where he was staying.

In a lawsuit Stryver, who brought him to federal court in Washington, D.C., says he did not threaten anyone. Soon after federal agents American citizens killed in MinneapolisStriver emailed Todd Lyons, who was at the time acting director of ICE. Stryver’s letter read in part: “You are a monstrous human being who will go down in history as the American Butcher Reinhard Heydrich.” He added: “Even Trump will turn against you before the end, and you will be a sad and contemptible man who eats himself alive ashamed of your pathetic weakness.” The letter criticized Lyons, warning him of his “downfall” — but the result, she said, would be “the burden of knowing the truth about yourself.”

Stryver was not arrested for the letter. But the notice warned him that it “may be a violation of federal law.”

The warning Stryver received is not an isolated incident. For much of the past year, the Department of Homeland Security has been pursuing people who criticize President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in emails and social media posts, accusing them of threatening federal employees or agents whose identities are already known to the public. OPR has opened more than 100 investigations into “defamation and threatening incidents” involving ICE, Wired I mentioned this week. Unlike Recent arrests and trials As for the so-called Antifa members, it appears that no criminal charges have been brought in these cases – but especially against the backdrop of a larger crackdown, the threat to civil liberties is clear.

“I think everyone would immediately recognize that it was a violation of the First Amendment if the police showed up and arrested someone over this email. But the First Amendment doesn’t just cover arrests — it also prohibits government retaliation or coercion,” said Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression who represents Stryver.

Steinbaugh doesn’t know how the Department of Homeland Security tracked Stryver back to his hotel, but he noted that the department regularly asks web platforms for help identifying critics. Since at least last August, the Department of Homeland Security has sent several hundred administrative subpoenas to companies like Google, Reddit, Discord and Meta requesting the names, email addresses, phone numbers and other identifying information of people who criticize ICE online. According to the New York Times.

“There is a broader pattern of the federal government using questionable legal resources or tools to deter free speech,” Steinbaugh said.

In a statement to EdgeDepartment of Homeland Security spokeswoman Lauren Pace said the department does not comment on ongoing investigations. “Any claim that DHS and its components are trying to ‘crush’ freedom of expression is categorically false. ICE investigates all credible threats against its employees and officials, including threats against the Director of ICE,” Pace said. “Anyone who assaults or threatens our law enforcement officers will face consequences.”

On the same day they spoke with Stryver’s wife, ICE Special Agents David Brody and Abe Henry Paigelynne faced Gonyeaa Syracuse woman, while working at a polling station. Brody and Henry gave her a warning notice similar to the one Stryver received, accusing her of publicly posting personal information about federal officers. Junia said Associated Press She believes the warning is related to a social media post she made in January about Jonathan Ross The ICE agent who shot Renee Judd.

Gonyea said she asked DHS agents to meet her at the polling place after receiving a voicemail saying they wanted to talk to her about “a post we believe you made on Instagram where you identified an ICE agent in January.”

DHS has repeatedly claimed that identifying federal agents — even those whose identities have become publicly known, such as Ross’s — is a form of personal information collection. “Collecting information on federal law enforcement officers is a federal crime that puts their lives and their families at serious risk,” DHS spokesman Pace said. Associated Press.

But reports indicate that the Department of Homeland Security is mixing criticism with threats. Last year, agents questioned a 67-year-old retiree who lives in suburban Philadelphia about an email he sent to Joseph Dernbach, the lead ICE prosecutor in the deportation case of an Afghan refugee identified in the case. The Washington Post An article called “Mr. H.”

The man, called John, wrote, according to what was reported by the British newspaper “Daily Mail”: “Mr. Dernbach, do not play Russian roulette with H’s life.” The Washington Post. “Caution must be exercised. There is a reason the US government and many other governments do not recognize the Taliban. Principles of common sense and decency must apply.”

A few minutes later, John received an email from Google stating that the Department of Homeland Security had requested information regarding his account. A little more than two weeks later, two plainclothes DHS agents came to his home along with a local police officer. They had a printout of his email. The agents reportedly agreed that John’s email was not illegal, but said mentions of “Russian roulette” and the “Taliban” could be interpreted as threats.

Far from equating criticism with threats, DHS claims that “smear” agents are putting their lives at risk, and says the threat of being identified is the reason they cover their faces and do not wear badges that label them as law enforcement. In March, the Department of Homeland Security He claimed There was an 8,000 percent increase in threats against its clients, and attacks increased by more than 1,300 percent, according to figures that Peace repeated in its email to Edge. In a statement issued at the time, Pace suggested that people who compare ICE to Nazis are responsible for these assaults. “Comparing ICE on a daily basis to the Nazi Gestapo, secret police, and slave patrols has consequences,” Pace said in March.

There are types of speech that could be considered threats — such as telling people gathered outside a government building to storm it and set it on fire — but calling someone a Nazi doesn’t meet that legal standard, said Aaron Mackey, deputy legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Just calling someone a Nazi, which is an archaic label protected by the First Amendment, does not fall into the same realm of incitement, which is not protected by the First Amendment,” Mackey said. Edge.

An NPR analysis found that there aren’t nearly as many Assaults ICE agents as DHS claims. But the Department of Homeland Security has used these questionable statistics to justify its violence against civilians.

Last October, Marimar Martinez, a US citizen, was shot by Border Patrol Agent Charles Exum while she was on patrol in Chicago as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Midway Blitz. Martinez was following the Exum’s unmarked car through the Brighton Park neighborhood, recording the incident on her phone and screaming, “Immigration! Immigration!” from her window to alert people to the presence of the Department of Homeland Security.

Exum later claimed that Martinez hit her car with his own. He bragged about the shooting in a chat on Signal, according to the Signal website Court records reviewed by The New Yorker. Martinez, who survived the shooting, has been charged with assault, obstruction and interference with a federal law enforcement officer, and faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty. But it appears the agency was already tracking her, though it’s unclear if the shooting is related. Five days before Martinez was shot, CBP reportedly shared her name, photo and social media account with agents in Chicago, and said she “encouraged the collection of personal information” about agents by sharing posts about them on social media.

The government eventually asked to dismiss the case, and the charges against her were dismissed with prejudice. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently issued a statement calling Martinez a domestic terrorist.

Internal communications reviewed by The New Yorker He said Martinez’s information had been verified in DHS databases — but a department spokesperson told the publication that “there is no database on ‘domestic terrorists’ operated by DHS,” adding that DHS monitors and investigates threats against its agents. In other words, the Department of Homeland Security has denied that it has a database dedicated to domestic terrorism, but it has not denied monitoring what it sees as threats — which apparently includes criticism made online. Democrats in Congress are trying to obtain more information about these lists, but the Department of Homeland Security has not complied, according to… Recent reporting by Mother Jones.

Whether there is a specific database or not, administration officials have accused critics of involvement in terrorism. White House adviser Stephen Miller described Alex Peretti as a “potential domestic terrorist” after he was killed by federal agents. Last year, Trump designated Antifa a domestic terrorist organization. In June of this year, while Judging a man who shot an agent after a protest outside Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Prairieland Detention Center in Texas, a federal judge handed down decades-prison sentences to several other people not involved in the shooting — including people with no ties to the shooter who left before the incident or did not attend the protest at all, all of whom the government claimed were linked to an “Antifa cell.”

That same month, federal prosecutors in Minnesota charged 15 people on charges including conspiracy to obstruct or injure a federal officer, solicitation to commit a crime of violence, assault on a federal officer, and destruction of federal property. Prosecutors allege that these 15 people are linked to “Antifa.” The 94-page indictment accuses the defendants of violence on the property and states that one of them wrote on an “anarchist blog.”

The sum of these efforts is to confuse dissent with crime, meaning that anyone who criticizes or protests Trump’s immigration policies is putting the lives of federal law enforcement officers at risk.

“Even when there are specific acts of violence in which federal officials are targeted, we see the federal government broadly reaching out beyond that to prosecute people who are very removed from that context and that criminal behavior in a way that quiets speech,” said Mackey, the EFF attorney. Stryver and Junia may not face criminal charges or prison time, but the government is still trying to silence them.