NY man sues ICE over alleged retaliation for email

A New York man filed a federal lawsuit on Monday, July 6, 2026, alleging that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement violated his First Amendment rights by sending agents to his home and hotel to deliver a warning notice over a critical email he sent to the agency’s former acting director. The lawsuit, filed in Washington, D.C., by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) on behalf of Rochester resident David Streever, seeks a court declaration that the government’s actions were unconstitutional and an injunction to prevent further retaliation.

Streever sent a three-paragraph email to then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons on January 26, 2026. In the message, Streever called Lyons “a monstrous human being” and compared him to Nazi official Reinhard Heydrich, writing, “You will never know peace.” The email was sent in the wake of the fatal shooting of two U.S. citizens, Renée Good and Alex Pretti, by ICE officers during Operation Metro Surge, a controversial immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis and Saint Paul that began in December 2025 and ended in February 2026.

Nearly five months later, on June 23, 2026, two Homeland Security Investigations agents...