David Streever, a former journalist now working in the tech industry, was on vacation in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter last week when he noticed his doorbell camera back home had captured footage of two law enforcement officers in blue jackets waiting on his front porch in Rochester, N.Y. The agents from Homeland Security Investigations were looking for Streever to discuss an email he sent in January to Todd Lyons, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The same HSI agents later tracked Streever to an airport hotel after he returned from Finland on June 25, raising questions about how federal investigators located him at a hotel whose address he had not shared with anyone except his wife, who did not know which specific hotel he had chosen. Civil liberties advocates say the case represents an escalation of what they describe as a pattern of using federal law enforcement to intimidate government critics.

In his Jan. 26 email to Lyons, Streever criticized federal immigration officers who fatally shot two people in Minneapolis and compared Lyons to Reinhard Heydrich, a Nazi official considered one of the architects of the Holocaust. "One powerless citizen yelled into the void with a stern email to the former director of this agency six months ago," Streever told NPR. "And now there's agents at his door."

What the Right Is Saying

Department of Homeland Security officials say they take threats against agency personnel seriously and are fulfilling their duty to protect employees.

DHS provided a statement saying: "ICE investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director. As a matter of policy, we do not comment on any ongoing investigations."

A recent DHS statement said: "This danger is not hypothetical. Our officers are experiencing coordinated campaigns of violence against them," referring to what the department describes as organized attacks on immigration enforcement personnel.

The form left at Streever's home by HSI agents stated that ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility had identified an email that may constitute a violation of Title 19 of the U.S. Code, which makes it a crime to threaten federal officials. The notice warned that continued behavior could result in criminal charges.

What the Left Is Saying

Civil liberties organizations say Streever's case is part of a broader crackdown on protected speech. The ACLU, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have all raised concerns about the investigation.

Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said agents visiting homes over critical emails "is starting to look like a pattern." He called the forms left at Streever's home "an escalation and a clear attempt to intimidate people."

"The government doesn't have to listen to those [emails], but it doesn't get to dispatch federal agents to your door and stalk you across the state of New York," said Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney at FIRE. He argued that Streever's email was not a threat under legal definitions. "A threat is a serious expression of an intent to commit unlawful violence. That's not what this was at all. This is criticizing the director of ICE and appealing to his conscience."

Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at EPIC, questioned whether surveillance technologies were used improperly. "Is there abuse of surveillance technologies in this instance? I think that's a legitimate question," he said. Wessler noted that while too many details remain unknown to determine potential Fourth Amendment violations, the case "sure looks like a serious issue under the First Amendment."

What the Numbers Show

For months, DHS and ICE have been pursuing what they characterize as a crackdown on alleged threats against their personnel and doxxing attempts. Federal agents have sent administrative subpoenas to email and social media platforms to identify people who posted about ICE anonymously, according to civil liberties groups tracking these cases.

Streever's case is not isolated. The same pair of HSI agents who visited his Rochester home on June 23 had also visited Syracuse poll worker Paigelynne Gonyea earlier that day while she was working New York's primary election. They presented her with a similar form regarding an Instagram post about ICE, according to NPR reporting.

Last year, Homeland Security agents visited a Philadelphia man to question him about a critical email he sent to a DHS attorney about the deportation of an Afghan man who feared Taliban retaliation. The exact number of such visits conducted by HSI in recent months is not publicly available.

The Bottom Line

Streever said he initially planned to call the agents back but changed his mind after learning they had tracked him to his airport hotel, location methods that remain unexplained. He connected with civil liberties advocates and Rep. Joe Morelle's office during a train ride home with his daughter.

"If they hadn't come after me, I would have just been a guy whose sole act of defiance was writing a stern email," Streever said. "But for them to come after me six months later for that one email, it makes me feel like we do have a lot of power."

How investigators located Streever at the airport hotel despite his not sharing that information with anyone except his wife remains unclear. It is unknown whether cell phone location data, surveillance cameras, credit card records, or other methods were used to track him.

What to watch: Whether this investigation proceeds to charges, how Congress responds to reports of HSI visits over constitutionally protected speech, and whether additional individuals come forward after FIRE's call for others who received similar forms to contact the organization.