Two U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stalked a New York woman at a polling place over a social media post identifying Jonathan Ross as the killer of Minnesota mother Renee Good.
The federal immigration agents walked into an active polling site Tuesday in Syracuse to pressure an on-duty poll worker into deleting a social media post — an encounter that election officials say had no legal basis and that the woman involved called reminiscent of "1984," reported Syracuse.com.
Paigelynne Gonyea was working at the Central Library during this week's primary election when two ICE agents asked to meet with her. Fearing for her safety if she met them alone, she invited them inside, where the agents handed her a form letter warning that threatening federal officials is a crime, citing an Instagram account they believed violated federal law.
Gonyea believes the agents were targeting a January post in which she named Ross, the ICE agent identified in news reports as having shot Good during President Donald Trump's immigration surge in Minneapolis. Her post said she thought it would be "a great day for Jonathan to be indicted" — language she insists falls far short of doxxing or threatening violence, since Ross's name had already been widely reported.
"They tried to scare me into signing it while I was working," she said.
Commissioner Dustin Czarny rushed to the site after receiving reports that ICE was inside a polling location, and pointed out that state election law restricts polling-place access to voters, workers, inspectors and voter assistants.
“There’s no role for law enforcement officials to be inside a polling place unless they are responding to an emergency of some kind,” Czarny said. “There is no indication of that here.”
Republican Commissioner Kevin Ryan confirmed with Homeland Security contacts that the visit did happen, but said agents told him Gonyea had invited them in herself.
Gonyea says she has no intention of deleting the post and has since reached out to Rep. John Mannion (D-NY), Mayor Sharon Owens, the state attorney general's office, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.
"For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me," she said, adding that agents "should have known better" than to enter a polling place at all.
One of the agents, identified as David Brody, declined to answer questions from a reporter.