A poll worker said two federal officers visited her at a voting location during New York’s primaries to confront her about a social media post she’d written criticizing the ICE officer who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Paigelynne Gonyea said the confrontation happened Tuesday while she was working at a polling place in Syracuse. Two officers gave Gonyea a written notice stating that she might be in violation of federal laws that prevent publicly posting personal information about federal officers, she said.
Gonyea said the warning stemmed from a post she made on social media in January in which she posted a picture of Jonathan Ross, an ICE officer who shot and killed Good in Minneapolis during anti-ICE demonstrations that month. In the post, Gonyea wrote: “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted.”
Gonyea’s post – which she made after Ross had already been identified by the news media – is still up. She said she has no intention of taking it down.
“I plan on using this experience to defend and support our First Amendment right,” Gonyea said. “Our first amendment rights definitely need to be protected now more than ever.”
Homeland Security considered post ‘doxxing’
Gonyea “committed a federal crime by posting the address of an ICE law enforcement officer online” and “if you doxx our officers, we will investigate you, and you will be brought to justice,” said Lauren Bis, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland security, in a statement.
Bis shared a different social media post from the same one of Gonyea’s accounts in which she said Gonyea shared Ross’s address. Part of the post was redacted.
“Doxxing federal law enforcement officers is a federal crime that puts their lives and their families in serious danger,” the statement said. “This danger is not hypothetical. Our law enforcement officers are on the frontlines arresting terrorists, gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and rapists.”
Fellow poll worker recorded encounter
Another worker at the polls Tuesday recorded the encounter on her phone. The video shows two uniformed people coming into the polling place and talking briefly with Gonyea, who refuses to sign a warning letter.
Gonyea later posted the letter on social media. The unsigned letter states that it’s from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility, whose primary mission is investigating allegations of misconduct by ICE personnel and contractors.
The poll worker who shot the video, Sheilia Milledge, said workers were shaken by the incident. No voters were present at the time of the confrontation, Gonyea said.
“I felt like it was a scare tactic that they were using,” Milledge said.
Attorney General’s Office is reviewing
A representative for the New York Attorney General’s Office said the office is aware of the situation and is reviewing it, while a representative for the governor’s office said the office had not heard of other similar incidents in the state.
The incident “did not disrupt voting and was not related to the election process,” said Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections. Onondaga County Democratic Elections Commissioner Dustin Czarny said he responded to the polling place shortly after the incident, spoke with poll workers, made sure voting wasn’t disrupted and “connected Paige to resources.”
Gonyea said she initially missed a call from officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, who wanted to meet with her.
A DHS agent left a voicemail saying they were calling “in reference to a post that we believe you made on Instagram where you doxxed an ICE officer back in January,” according a recording of the message she shared on social media.
“We just wanted to talk to you about it. You’re not in any type of trouble,” the agent said, according to a recording provided by Gonyea.
Gonyea said she returned the call to ask the officers to come into the polling place because she felt it would be safer to meet with them inside.
Advocates consider encounter intimidating
It appears to be incidental that the federal officers served Gonyea with the warning while she was working at the polling place, but their presence could still be intimidating to voters and poll workers, said Sean Morales-Doyle, director of the voting rights and elections program at Brennan Center for Justice, a left-leaning public policy institute.
Adam Steinbaugh, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said if officers are giving residents “a formal complaint about their protected speech, we’re in trouble.”
Rep. John Mannion, a Democrat who represents the area in Congress, also sent a letter to DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin calling for the department to review the incident and “put a stop to any ICE activities that target protected speech.”
“ICE should not be broadly targeting online speech or actively monitoring social media accounts without cause and without proper judicial protections,” Mannion’s letter stated.
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Whittle reported from Portland, Maine. Associated Press writers Anthony Izaguirre in New York City and Rebecca Santana in Washington contributed to this report.
