ICE agents – Five months after a TikTok and Instagram creator posted about an ICE agent who was involved in a deadly shooting in Minnesota, federal Homeland Security agents showed up at her New York polling site, urged her to remove the post, and left her with a document a
Paigelynne Gonyea expected Election Day to be about long lines and folding chairs—not a voicemail from Homeland Security.
Five months after she posted about ICE on Instagram. Gonyea. who has more than 100. 000 followers on TikTok and more than 33. 000 followers on Instagram. was working the polls at the Central Library in Syracuse on a Tuesday in New York. She said she wasn’t on her phone when the call came in. The caller identified himself as a Homeland Security special agent. and he said he was calling from a New Jersey number.
“We were just by your apartment,” the caller told her, according to Gonyea’s account. He said he had gotten her phone number from her significant other. He added that the agents were reaching out because of a post Gonyea was believed to have made on Instagram—something the caller said involved doxxing an ICE agent in January.
Gonyea denied that she doxxed anyone. Doxxing is generally understood as releasing sensitive personal information such as an address or phone number. But the Trump administration has tried in recent months to broaden that definition.
The Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to questions about the voicemail or what happened next.
What happened next—at a polling place on election day—has become the center of a dispute that civil liberties advocates say may collide with basic protections for speech.
Gonyea says she called the agent back and told him she was working at a polling site that day. The agent wanted Gonyea to come outside. She refused, saying she didn’t feel comfortable. “I don’t trust going outside or dealing with ICE agents at all in any capacity. ” Gonyea said in an interview with NPR.
Her fellow poll worker, 70-year-old Sheilia Milledge, didn’t want her to go either. Milledge told NPR that she uses a cane and couldn’t “run behind her.” “There’s too many people being kidnapped by ICE and I can’t run behind her,” Milledge said.
Gonyea and the other poll workers say there was a lull in voters when they spoke to the agent by phone. Then, Milledge and another poll worker recorded video as a man and a woman with ICE badges entered the library. In the recording, Milledge can be heard trying to call city officials.
Gonyea says the agents had a file about her that included her name. address. date of birth. height. weight. and eye color. She said the agents asked her to sign a document claiming her Instagram account might have violated a federal law that makes it unlawful to threaten or intimidate a federal officer.
Milledge is heard saying on the video that federal immigration agents came to the polling place “to bring a warning to one of our workers.”
It is illegal under federal law for armed federal law enforcement to enter a polling place. It is unclear whether the agents were armed. A recently enacted New York state law also bars immigration agents from entering voting sites.
Kevin Ryan, a local Republican county election commissioner, told NPR he confirmed through a DHS contact that the people with badges were real agents. Ryan said the incident was “a comedy of errors from beginning to end.”
As a poll inspector, Ryan said Gonyea should have known not to invite the agents in. He also said it was “a mistake” for the agents to enter the polling place, and he questioned why the agents needed to confront her at all about her social media post on that day.
Gonyea said the agents never told her exactly which post triggered their visit. but she said they confirmed it was tied to a post about Jonathan Ross. an ICE agent who fatally shot Renée Macklin Good in Minnesota. Gonyea said she saw a printout of a screenshot from her Instagram account featuring a photo of Ross.
Gonyea posted the photo in January. days after the shooting. and she said her caption referenced reporting that had identified him as Jonathan Ross. In that caption. she wrote: “I think today is a great day for Jonathan to be indicted.” (Ross has not been indicted for his role in Macklin Good’s death.).
The document the agents asked Gonyea to sign came from ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility. She said it warned: “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW” at the top. The notice reads, “OPR is requesting that you promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.”
Gonyea did not sign the document and did not delete any of her posts.
Instead. she posted the document the agents asked her to sign to Instagram along with the voicemail she received and a video of the incident. In her Instagram caption. Gonyea wrote: “Just had a run-in with ICE at work for when I doxxed Jonathan Ross in January. ” though she told NPR she had intended for “doxxed” to appear in quotes.
Gonyea said she doesn’t believe she crossed any legal line. “I didn’t say anything that would incite violence or cause anyone to want to go out of their way to go harm an ICE agent, or their family, or anything like that,” she said. “What I said was within the confines of free speech.”
Civil liberties experts have raised concern about the agents’ actions. especially as the agency faces other scrutiny for surveilling peaceful protesters and activists. Perry Grossman of the New York Civil Liberties Union said demanding accountability for the killing of an American citizen is protected political speech.
“If this is the kind of speech that the administration, that DHS wants to go after, then they are trying to fundamentally redefine the First Amendment and the scope of permissible public debate,” Grossman said. “And that is wrong. That is ridiculous.”
For Gonyea, the experience has stayed with her in a way she can’t shake.
She said she keeps returning to George Orwell’s “1984,” a book she described as one of her favorites growing up. “That was one of my favorite books growing up,” Gonyea said. “I just did not think that I would be living in a time where it’s starting to parallel.”
Holliday Moore of member station WAER contributed reporting to this story.
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