It’s OK to tell ICE their actions will haunt them, judge rules in speech fight

At least for now, ICE apparently has conceded that Streever’s email was protected speech, US District Judge Rudolph Contreras wrote in his opinion. Notably, ICE confirmed that the agency supposedly dropped the investigation within a month of sending the warning, but it never told Streever that his case was closed. Rather, an official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) account made a “somewhat contradictory statement” in an X post that Streever reasonably understood as confirming that the probe was still underway, Contreras said. During litigation, ICE wouldn’t explain who made the determination that Streever was potentially illegally threatening violence. Instead, ICE noted that the email came amid a reported “946 percent increase in threats against ICE officials” between 2024 and 2025. Ultimately, it was decided that “the email had potential threatening undertones to ICE personnel, potentially presenting a safety concern,” ICE claimed. As the case moves forward, ICE will likely continue to argue that it needs to police critical emails like Streever’s “to protect the ability of law enforcement to investigate and deter criminal threats or crimes that follow less-than-criminal threats.” However, Contreras emphasized that ICE’s lawyers “wisely do not contest that Mr. Streever’s January email constitutes protected expression or that similar speech would be protected.” Streever’s email addressed salient political decisions to a government official, an arena where the First Amendment’s speech protections reach their “zenith.” More importantly, the email does not contain a physical threat. The email registered displeasure with Acting Director Lyons’s official conduct, forecasted that the Acting Director will lose favor with the President, and warned that the moral weight of the Acting Director’s actions will haunt him in the future. Although Mr. Streever’s email was not kind, and may not have been particularly productive, it was a far cry from a “[t]rue threat[ ] of violence” sufficient for the email to shed its First Amendment protections. As it stands, the agency must defend against both First Amendment coercion and retaliation claims. Contreras found that Streever is likely “to succeed in proving that Defendants either tried to coerce him into abandoning his First Amendment rights or retaliated against him for his exercise of those rights.” Until that’s decided, the injunction ensures no further censorship can occur stemming from the ICE threat, the judge said, no matter how cutting Striver’s criticism may be. “Streever’s injury is the loss of his freedom to engage in political speech now because the threat of such an investigation or prosecution looms over him like the sword of Damocles, and he is forced to self-censor under that threat,” Contreras wrote. Later on, he stressed that “Streever has a right to express his political views through non-threatening speech, however degrading the speech might be.” For Streever, the injunction means he’s free to once again “engage in speech through off-the-cuff emails and comments on social media” that ICE may have previously tried to use against him, Contreras wrote. However, ICE could still potentially target him in a future investigation, as the injunction doesn’t cover all possible future probes into his protected speech. That’s likely troubling since Contreras noted that ICE had fought to substantially narrow the injunction in a way that might have allowed the agency to continue pursuing Streever by simply assigning another agent. FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh told Ars there’s no indication yet that the government will appeal the injunction, which takes effect after 14 days. He celebrated his client’s win, saying that Contreras’ “decision is a strong protection for the First Amendment” and confirming that “we are confident the court’s careful analysis will hold up on appeal or after summary judgment.” “Ominous letters warning people their speech might land them in prison are meant to coerce people into silence, and that’s not how the First Amendment works,” Steinbaugh said in a press release. Streever has been clear that his hope is that his ICE fight will put an end to intimidation tactics that he believes are intended to silence protestors. “I cherish our right to speak openly about issues of public concern,” Streever said in July as his free speech fight intensified and he felt forced to explain to his daughter that ICE might try to forcibly detain him. “I hope others will not be discouraged from peacefully expressing their views, even when those views are critical of the government.”