Federal agents climbed the steps to David Streever’s porch in Rochester, New York, walked past his kid’s toys, and rang the doorbell to warn him that an email might be a crime.

He wasn’t home. He was in Finland, riding theme-park rides with his seven-year-old daughter. The message that sent two Homeland Security Investigations officers to his door was five months old, and every word of it was protected speech.

Streever is fighting back. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed a federal lawsuit on July 6 in Washington, D.C., naming Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, three agents, and other ICE officials as defendants.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.  

The suit asks a court to affirm what the Constitution already guarantees, that an American can call a top law enforcement official a monster without federal officers turning up at his home.

Streever, a writer and author, sent the message on January 26 to Todd Lyons, then the acting director of ICE, using Lyons’ government address.

He wrote after federal immigration officers in Minneapolis shot and killed two US citizens during the agency’s January surge, among them Alex Pretti.

The subject line read “What’s next.” Across three paragraphs, Streever compared Lyons to a Nazi and predicted he would be devoured by his own conscience.

“You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America’s Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher. The way you are protecting the obvious execution in Minnesota, even as we see the videos, will lead to your downfall. Even Trump will turn on you before the end, and you will be a sad, despised man who eats himself alive with shame at your own pathetic weakness. You will never know peace. You will seek to lose yourself, to escape the burden of knowing the truth about yourself. But wherever you go, you will find yourself. You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth.”

Those are the words of political anger at full volume. Streever predicted that Lyons would be crushed by guilt and shame. He threatened no one. Angry letters to powerful officials run through the whole of American history, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly protected this kind of overheated rhetoric against government attempts to brand it as dangerous.

The response came on June 23. Streever’s Nest camera caught two agents arriving in the afternoon, climbing the steps past children’s toys and ringing the bell of an empty house.

His wife came home and found them waiting. One agent handed her a document meant for her husband.

The paper was labeled “WARNING NOTICE.” In underlined capital letters on ICE and DHS stationery, it told Streever “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” and said the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility had flagged his email.

It asked that he “promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.” The bottom of the form carried the actual threat, a line warning that “Receipt of this Notice will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above.”

Streever’s wife told the agents he was abroad and would fly home that Friday. They did not wait. Streever and his daughter landed at JFK two days later and checked into a nearby airport hotel to sleep off the jet lag.

That evening a Homeland Security agent walked up to the front desk, asking for him and left a business card. Two agents called his phone through the night, leaving voicemails that identified them only as “Homeland Security Investigations.” His wife had never told anyone where he was staying. They found him anyway.

The government’s official account is thin. DHS said only that “ICE investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director” and that “As a matter of policy, we do not comment on any ongoing investigations.” Set that against the calendar. Five months passed between the email and the knock. Agents who believe a man poses a genuine danger do not spend nearly half a year getting around to it.

FIRE Senior Attorney Adam Steinbaugh made the same point. “If someone is really threatening a government official, you don’t wait five months to act on it,” he said.

“The fact that authorities didn’t respond immediately shows that David presented no threat. This pursuit is designed to intimidate lawful speech, pure and simple.”

The lawsuit treats the warning notice as the weapon it is. The government “is actively threatening that freedom,” the complaint reads, “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.”

Handing someone an official federal document that accuses them of possible crimes, then sending armed agents to deliver it by hand, the suit argues, “can have only one purpose: to systemically chill ICE’s critics and coerce them into silence.”

As the complaint puts it, “Our Constitution does not tolerate such a brazen abuse of authority.”

Streever is one of the first two people to reveal that Homeland Security handed them these warning notices over their online speech. How many others got one and went quiet is the question the notices are built to answer in the government’s favor.

Streever chose not to. “I cherish our right to speak openly about issues of public concern,” he said. “I hope others will not be discouraged from peacefully expressing their views, even when those views are critical of the government.”