HSI Agents Tracked a Rochester Man to His Hotel in Finland Over a Five-Month-Old Email Calling the ICE Director a Nazi

What happened

On June 23, two Homeland Security Investigations agents appeared at David Streever's home in Rochester, N.Y. Streever wasn't there. He was in Finland on vacation with his 7-year-old daughter.

His wife, the Rev. Hilary Streever, 43, arrived home that afternoon with their 2-year-old son, still in her clergy collar, and found the agents waiting on the porch. According to NPR, the agents told her they were there about "an email he may or may not have sent threatening Todd Lyons," who was then serving as acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The agents left a form. It read "WARNING NOTICE" and "YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW," and cited federal statutes criminalizing threats against federal officials, according to NPR. The form was unsigned.

The agents then tracked Streever to his hotel in Finland, according to reporting by 13WHAM and CNY Central.

The email

Streever sent a single email to Lyons' government address on January 26, five months before agents appeared at his door. The timing followed the fatal shooting of two people by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.

The email, which Streever shared publicly via Syracuse.com, reads in part: "You are a monstrous human being and will go down in history as America's Reinhard Heydrich, the butcher... 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."

Streever's attorney, Adam Steinbaugh, told 13WHAM the email is "a plea" and "nothing threatening" — an appeal to Lyons' conscience about how he would feel in the future. Streever told NPR: "I've never made a threat against anyone. I'm not a violent person."

DHS's position

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement, reported by CNY Central, saying: "ICE investigates all credible threats towards its employees and officers, including threats to the ICE Director." Threatening a federal official is a crime under 18 U.S.C. § 875 and § 115. Agents can't always distinguish political venting from a genuine threat based on text alone, and the comparison to Reinhard Heydrich — the architect of the Holocaust — is incendiary language. HSI may have had a legitimate obligation to at least verify who sent the email and assess whether there was any physical danger to Lyons.

Why critics aren't buying it

The email contains no threat of physical violence. It predicts reputational and psychological consequences — shame, regret, historical infamy. Courts have consistently distinguished between "true threats" and hyperbolic political speech. "Heydrich" is a moral insult, not a call to action.

NPR reported that the same agents presented the same "WARNING NOTICE" form to a Syracuse poll worker the same day they visited Streever's home, in connection with an Instagram post about ICE. That's two people, in one day, in upstate New York, receiving unsigned government warnings over constitutionally protected expression. Civil liberties advocates quoted by NPR called the forms an intimidation tactic.

A one-off visit to verify a credible threat looks different than a coordinated same-day operation delivering warning notices to two unrelated critics of ICE in the same region.

NPR has been tracking a broader trend of DHS contact with people who publicly criticize immigration enforcement. The outlet previously reported on a woman who was told by DHS agents to take down a social media post about ICE. A new lawsuit, also cited by NPR, alleges DHS illegally tracked and intimidated observers of immigration enforcement operations.

The agents' decision to locate Streever at his hotel in a foreign country — not just leave a message with his wife — escalated what could have been a routine verification into something more aggressive. Streever and his daughter were on vacation. He posed no immediate threat to anyone.

No charges, no investigation announced

As of July 1, 2026, no charges have been filed against Streever and no formal investigation has been publicly announced. His attorney Adam Steinbaugh is with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which has been outspoken about what it views as government intimidation of speech.

Under what written standard does HSI decide an email to a government official's public address constitutes a "credible threat" sufficient to justify tracking that person to another country and presenting a federal warning notice to his spouse? DHS has not answered that question on the record.