How ICE Agents Tried to Chill Speech with a “Warning Notice”

​Paigelynne Gonyea was working at a polling place in Syracuse, New York, when she received a phone message from a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.

The caller said agents “were just by” her apartment seeking to talk to Gonyea about an online post in which she supposedly “doxed an ICE agent back in January.”

Gonyea, who has an Instagram account with more than 30,000 followers, took this as a reference to a post she had made about a masked ICE agent linked to a major national story, the fatal shooting of Renée Good in her car.

Gonyea’s post read: “The ICE agent who shot and killed Renée Good in broad daylight has been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune. I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted!”

When armed agents took Gonyea up on offer to meet at her polling place, she was presented with a “warning notice.” This document informed Gonyea that “it is unlawful to threaten to assault, kidnap, and/or murder a federal official” and that “knowingly making restricted personal information about a covered person, or their immediate family member, publicly available with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime.” Doing so, the document said, could subject her to federal and state prosecution.

Gonyea was baffled. The post she had made did not include Ross’s address, phone number, or any other personal information other than his name – which had been widely reported.

Gonyea later told the media that the agents “tried to scare me into signing” the document “while I was working.” She refused. She also refused to remove her post about Agent Ross.

To summarize: Whatever one thinks about ICE’s efforts to repatriate undocumented persons in general, or the facts surrounding the shooting of Renée Good in particular, all Gonyea did was to make a post expressing her opinion that a named agent of the federal government should be indicted for shooting a woman. ICE treated that opinion as a crime, showing up at polling station with armed officers who attempted to intimidate Gonyea into signing a document in which she would have likely incriminated herself.

To be sure, it is indeed a crime to publish “restricted personal information” about a federal official with the intent to do harm. ICE’s unwillingness to distinguish between this sort of actual “doxing” and expressing an opinion about holding an agent accountable before the law displays a thuggish disregard for the First Amendment.
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More details are available in this NPR post. Read here. 

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