Federal Agents Were Sent To The Home Of A Man Who Criticized ICE. He’s Suing

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Jul 8, 2026 - 15:00

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Federal Agents Were Sent To The Home Of A Man Who Criticized ICE. He’s Suing

Protests continue outside Delaney Hall Detention Facility in Newark, New Jersey — Source: Andrew Lichtenstein / Getty

Trump supporters will convince themselves that when we call President Donald Trump an authoritarian and his administration an authoritarian regime, we’re all simply suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, the fictitious ailment made up by MAGA morons who lack the capacity to be any more clever than that. It’s not because the sitting president openly denies certain people the right to due process, uses the military to attack U.S. citizens, declares imaginary leftist groups as terrorist organizations, deports people just for organizing or reporting on protests he disagrees with, pressures the FCC to cancel TV programs that are critical of him, spreads round-the-clock election fraud propaganda — which he began doing in an effort to stay in power after he was voted out in a free and fair election — and then tries to force Congress to pass voting laws that are based on that propaganda. No, it’s none of that — we just have TDS.

Anyway, the federal government is now facing a federal lawsuit filed by an upstate New York resident who claims U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were sent to his house with a warning over an email he sent, criticizing the federal agency and the administration in charge of it — which is absolutely nothing a tyrannical, authoritarian government would do, amirite?

According to the Washington Post, on Jan. 26, David Streever wrote a scathing letter to ICE’s acting director, Todd Lyons, who, in April, announced he was stepping away from the position, which has become somewhat of a trend for ICE and Border Patrol officials as of late. Streever’s letter was reportedly inspired by his outrage over the extrajudicial executions of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Apparently, the feds were not happy about Streever, and they paid him a personal visit to tell him so.

From the Post:

Streever called Lyons a “monstrous human being” and “America’s Reinhard Heydrich,” a reference to a high-ranking official in Nazi Germany who oversaw the regime’s secret police. Hesays he never dreamed the note would lead to a knock on his own door.
About five months later, Department of Homeland Security agents came to Streever’s house in Rochester, New York, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in federal court. Streever wasn’t home, but DHS tracked him to a hotel in New York City where he and his 7-year-old daughter were staying overnight after returning from a trip to Finland.
Agents told the hotel front desk they were looking for him, left repeated voicemails and sought to have him sign an unusual warning notice saying his email could be a crime.
In his lawsuit against DHS officials, Streever says the department’s actions violate the First Amendment, which broadly protects freedom of speech and individual expression.
“Americans have a clear right to criticize government officials,” said JT Morris, deputy director of litigation at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the nonprofit group representing Streever.
“When federal agents come to your door and ask you to stop engaging in political speech,” Morris said, it “is an act of intimidation that the Constitution doesn’t tolerate.”

Seriously, right-wingers complained that the First Amendment was under attack every time a conservative got banned from the social media platform formerly known as Twitter; surely they’d be hopping MAGA mad if they found out the federal government was showing up at the homes of citizens to intimidate them for saying really mean things about government officials. Or maybe that’s just my TDS talking.

It’s worth mentioning, of course, that Streever isn’t alone in his claims that Trump’s foot soldiers have used their positions to bully citizens over simple criticism.

More from the Post:

But the department has tracked down others critical of its operations, according to Paigelynne Gonyea, an online influencer who also lives in Upstate New York and was presented with the same form last month.
Gonyea has been a vocal critic of ICE’s high-profile enforcement operation in Minnesota, which included the arrest of tens of thousands of immigrants and the fatal shootings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti, both U.S. citizens who were protesting the detention campaign.
DHS accused Gonyea of revealing an ICE agent’s address online, something Gonyea denies. The department has not provided evidence for its allegation.

Whaaaaah? The Trump administration made allegations it failed to provide evidence for? OK, fine, but what kind of TDS patient asks for evidence instead of taking the minions of our pathological-liar-in-chief at face value? (Wait, the feds won’t come to my house over my violent, terroristic use of unbridled sarcasm, will they?)

In January, we reported that activists in Maine who monitored ICE activity in their neighborhoods claimed federal agents, some wearing masks and tactical gear, had shown up to their homes to intimidate them and threaten them with arrest.

The Post also noted that last year, DHS agents visited the home of a Pennsylvania man after he emailed a federal prosecutor a plea to stop the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker, and that the administration issued an administrative subpoena, seeking access to the contents of the man’s Google account.

So, there’s a pattern here that couldn’t be more obvious. It’s almost as if TDS is a condition brought on by a simple refusal to ignore what’s right in front of us. Imagine that.