A Rochester man who sent a blistering email to ICE's acting director now has federal agents showing up at his door and tracking him to an airport hotel — proof that your government will move heaven and earth to silence a critic while cartels run the southern border unmolested.

David Streever fired off a three-paragraph email to Todd Lyons on January 26, after federal immigration officers fatally shot two U.S. citizens — Alex Pretti and Renee Good — during an enforcement surge in Minneapolis. The email compared Lyons to a Nazi and warned his conscience would haunt him. "You will never know peace," Streever wrote. "You will torment yourself until your last day on Earth." Harsh words. Protected words.

Five months later, on June 23, two Homeland Security Investigations agents rang the doorbell of Streever's Rochester home while he was vacationing in Finland with his 7-year-old daughter. They left his wife a document labeled "WARNING NOTICE" stating he "MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW" and demanding he "promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior." The notice added that receipt would "be taken into consideration" if he continued such conduct.

Then it got worse. When Streever and his daughter landed at JFK and checked into an airport hotel, a front desk clerk told him a DHS agent had come looking for him and left a business card. His wife had not told agents where he was staying. NPR reported this raises serious questions about how the federal government tracked a citizen's movements across international travel — questions neither CNN nor NPR pushed DHS to answer.

On Monday, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression filed suit on Streever's behalf in federal court in Washington, D.C. "The First Amendment unquestionably protects Streever's criticism," FIRE said. The lawsuit argues DHS "is actively threatening that freedom, tracking down and retaliating against speakers" and that "our Constitution does not tolerate such a brazen abuse of authority."

DHS circled the wagons. A spokesperson told CNN that ICE "investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director." CNN framed the case as part of a "broader debate" pitting free speech against officer safety — a convenient framing that treats a citizen's conscience-laden email as equivalent to a credible assassination threat.

Streever wasn't the only one. The same agents tracked down Paigelynn Gonyea at her Syracuse polling place on primary day, June 23, and handed her the same warning notice. Her offense: a January social media post about the ICE officer who shot Good. DHS later claimed she posted the officer's address; Gonyea said she only named him, which had already been publicly reported. The New York Civil Liberties Union called it pure intimidation — tracking down citizens "for no reason but to try to intimidate anyone speaking out against ICE's rampant abuses."

The lawsuit names three federal agents, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, and ICE officials as defendants. Lyons, who left ICE in late May, did not respond to requests for comment.

Two American citizens are dead at the hands of federal officers in Minneapolis. The government's response wasn't accountability — it was surveillance and intimidation of the people demanding it. The cartels pouring fentanyl across an open border face no such manhunts. But send an angry email to a bureaucrat, and the full weight of the federal surveillance state will find you at a Finnish theme park or a JFK hotel room. That's the republic we're living in.