'Honestly, it shook me': Stalked poll worker unnerved by ICE confrontation

A poll worker in Syracuse, New York said she was left unsettled after a pair of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents showed up at her polling place to tell her to delete Instagram content calling for the indictment of the agent who shot Renee Good in January.

The worker, Paigelynne Gonyea, was in the middle of her shift during Tuesday’s elections in New York when she received a phone message from someone who identified himself as Dave Brody, a special agent with the Department of Homeland Security.

He said agents “were just by” her apartment and had spoken to her husband about a post in which she “doxxed an ICE agent back in January.”

Gonyea said the agents were referring to a post she made on January 8, 2026, the day after an ICE agent shot and killed Good, a 37-year-old mother and US citizen, in Minneapolis. The post contained an image of the masked agent, who had at that point been identified as Jonathan Ross by the Minnesota Star Tribune.

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

Gonyea said she could not leave her job working the polls to speak with the agents, so she told them to come to her polling place. “They knew I was a poll site worker and still came in,” she said.

Referencing what happened to Good, she said she refused to meet with the agents outside alone.

“I’ve seen the news, especially in Minnesota,” she said. “And I didn’t want anything to happen to me at all.”

Video of the encounter, shot by another employee, shows the two agents entering the polling site at Central Library on Salina Street.

The agents handed Gonyea a form letter that read, “YOU MAY BE IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW.”

The form, which Gonyea posted, said ICE’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) had identified a post on Gonyea’s account that it believed “may constitute a violation” of federal law.

The notice informed her 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” was also illegal. It said violating these laws could subject her to state and federal prosecution.

The letter directed her to “promptly remove and/or discontinue the aforementioned behavior.” It warned her that receipt of the notice “will be taken into consideration, should you continue to be involved in any criminal activities described above.”

Gonyea told Syracuse.com that the agents presented her with copies of her social media posts and her driver’s license and that “they tried to scare me into signing” the document “while I was working.”

She refused to sign the notice despite continued pressure from the agents.

Gonyea was emphatic that her post—which only repeated publicly reported information—did not violate the law.

“I didn’t dox his personal information, such as address, phone number,” she said, adding that she would not remove the post.

Gonyea has discussed the case with the New York Board of Elections and the attorney general’s civil rights office, and she said she has contacted US Rep. John Mannion (D-NY), Syracuse Mayor Sharon Owens, and the New York Civil Liberties Union.

She has created a GoFundMe page to pay for potential legal expenses.

“For ICE to come to me over a social media post just feels very 1984 to me,” Gonyea said. “They definitely should have known better to not go into a polling place, even if I said it was OK.”

In a post on her GoFundMe page, Gonyea described the incident as a “pretty unsettling run-in.”

“It’s the kind of situation that makes you stop and think about free speech and how far government authority can go. Honestly, it shook me, and I don’t think it’s something that should just be brushed off,” she said. “It just doesn’t sit right with me.”

Dustin Czarny, the election commissioner for Onondaga County, emphasized that federal law only allows specific people to enter polling places during elections—including poll workers, elections inspectors, voters eligible to vote at the site, and someone a voter brought to assist them in voting

Federal law specifies that it is unlawful for anyone in federal service to send “troops or armed men” to places where elections are held.

“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.”

Despite this, Trump administration officials have indicated a desire to send ICE agents to polling places on election day during the 2026 midterms.

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in February that her department had been “proactive to make sure we have the right people voting” in elections. In March, then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche asked at a conservative political conference, “Why is there objection to sending ICE officers to polling places?” adding, “Illegals can’t vote. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Trump refused to rule out the possibility when asked about it by reporters in May, saying he’d “do anything necessary to make sure we have honest elections.”

Critics of ICE have described agents’ demands for Gonyea to remove political speech as a worrying new frontier for the agency’s encroachments on civil liberties.

“ICE agents entered a polling place to intimidate a worker about her social media posts,” said David J. Bier, the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. “Wouldn’t you quit before you carried out an order to do this?”

“Americans refuse to be intimidated by these government criminals who hate the Constitution,” he added. “Normal people want accountability, not impunity for killing Americans unnecessarily.”

“But it’s not enough for ICE to disagree; they need to stamp out dissent,” he said. “I know they monitor my social media. You should know that they’re monitoring yours too.”