Months after he sent a harsh email to ICE, agents tracked him to his home and a hotel
News
Months after he sent a harsh email to ICE, agents tracked him to his home and a hotel
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David Streever was on vacation in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter last week when he noticed his doorbell camera back home had captured some unusual footage. In recordings from hours earlier, he could see what looked like two law enforcement officers in blue jackets waiting on his front porch in Rochester, N.Y.
Details
Streever, 45, didn’t grow concerned about it until he learned more about their visit from his wife, the Rev. Hilary Streever, 43, who is an Episcopal priest. She encountered the pair late on the afternoon of June 23 when she was arriving home with the couple’s 2-year-old son, still wearing her clergy collar.
The agents were from Homeland Security Investigations, part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and they were looking for David Streever. Hilary Streever told NPR the agents had said it was about “an email he may or may not have sent threatening Todd Lyons,” the former acting director of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
“He wouldn’t have sent that,” she recalled telling the agents. She told them her husband was out of the country and would be home Friday.
Analysis
The agents asked Hilary Streever to tell her husband to call them back and left a form for him to sign. It said “WARNING NOTICE” and “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” and described federal laws that make it a crime to threaten federal officials. Later, the Streevers would learn the same agents presented the same form to a Syracuse poll worker earlier that day, and accused her of threatening an ICE officer on her Instagram account. Civil liberties advocates have criticized the agency’s rec
When Hilary Streever relayed the agents’ message to David, he was puzzled. “I’ve never made a threat against anyone. I’m not a violent person,” he told NPR. He did remember a strongly worded note he had sent to Lyons’ government email address in January right after federal immigration officers fatally shot two people in Minneapolis.
In the Jan. 26 email, Streever, a former journalist who now works in the tech industry, warned Lyons that his own conscience would torment him in the future for his actions and compared him to a Nazi official. It is the only email he sent to Lyons, Streever said.
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