Criticize ICE and you may get a visit from Homeland Security—anytime, anywhere. Federal agents have started showing up at the homes and even hotel rooms of ordinary Americans who criticized the agency online or by email, warning them that they may be under criminal investigation for constitutionally protected speech.
NPR reports:
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. …
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. …
Just a couple hours after Streever landed at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Thursday evening, a third Homeland Security Investigations special agent tracked him to the airport hotel he was staying at that night. The agent left a business card with the front desk, raising questions about whether Streever is under surveillance.
“This is clearly out of line,” said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which advocates for free speech, about the investigation into Streever. The First Amendment protects the rights of Americans to voice their concerns to their government, Steinbaugh said. “The government doesn’t have to listen to those, but it doesn’t get to dispatch federal agents to your door and stalk you across the state of New York,” he added.
Nobody was charged with a crime. Nobody made an actual threat. What connects these episodes is a government agency deploying the machinery of federal surveillance against its critics—ordinary individuals, at that, rather than public commentators or political officials—and counting on fears of a knock at the door to ensure future silence.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X.
 | A guest post by
|