Prosecution for Alleged Threats to ICE Officer's Children (Sent to Officer's Wife) Can Go Forward
In U.S. v. Alexander, decided yesterday by Judge Paul Engelmayer (S.D.N.Y.), the criminal complaint (which yielded an indictment) alleges:
[O]n or about August 20, 2025, [Alexander] sent threatening electronic messages via a social media application … to the spouse ("Victim-1") of a U.S. Immigrations [sic] and Customs Enforcement ("ICE") deportation officer ("Officer-1"). The first message stated, "Are these your kids you had with your Nazi murder rapist husband. They will get it too. Never think that his whiteness will protect them." The second message consisted of a photograph of Victim-1's and Officer-1's children….
Defendant argued her speech was protected the First Amendment, but the court declined to dismiss the indictment:
Section 875(c) makes it a crime to transmit in interstate commerce "any communication containing any threat to kidnap any person or any threat to injure the person of another." … Only "true threats" are outside the First Amendment's scope and thus are punishable under § 875(c). The Supreme Court has described "true threats" of violence unprotected by the First Amendment as "'serious expression[s]' conveying that a speaker means to 'commit an act of unlawful violence.'" "True threats" are distinguished from "jests, 'hyperbole,' or other statements that when taken in context do not convey a real possibility that violence will follow." …
Whether Alexander's alleged message to the victim contains a "true threat" to injure is a question for the jury. There is no basis for the Court to determine that the conduct, necessarily, cannot so qualify, and to dismiss the Indictment on that ground….
The court acknowledged that, "[i]n a rare case, a court may conclude 'as a matter of law' that 'no reasonable jury could find that the alleged communication constitutes a threat or a true threat,'" but concluded that this wasn't such a case:
… Alexander posits a non-threatening construction. She urges that the key phrase ("[t]hey will get it too"), read in light of the next sentence ("[n]ever think that his whiteness will protect them"), is not a threat to injure the children. Rather, she argues, the message conveys that the "children will not be insulated from the harsh governmental policies associated with their father's work." Alexander argues that the message "contained no threat," in that it was "so clearly non-threatening that no reasonable jury could find otherwise." U.S. v. Joudeh (M.D. Fla. 2026) (citation omitted). She likens her case to Joudeh, supra, in which an online communication was held, on a motion to dismiss, necessarily to fall short of a true threat.
Joudeh is readily distinguished. There, the defendant was charged with violating § 875(c) for transmitting an "online comment" that read, "I wish someone would in alive him." On the motion to dismiss, the district court credited (as the Government argued) that "in alive" was a mistype of "unalive," a euphemism for "kill." The court nonetheless found that "no reasonable jury could consider this broad, non-detailed wish to be a threat." Instead, it held, the communication reflected "a vague desire that someone was no longer alive." The court therefore dismissed the indictment on the ground that the statement did "not express an intent to commit harm in the past, present, or future, and there [was] no other context to explain how this statement could possibly be threatening"—it was "simply not a threat." In recognizing that a message conveying merely "a vague desire" that harm would befall someone was not a true threat, the court tracked the Second Circuit's case law in this area, which likewise distinguishes expressions of "abstract desire" from "true threats." U.S. v. Turner (2d Cir. 2013) ("Turner did not merely advocate law violation or express an abstract desire for the deaths of Judges Easterbrook, Bauer, and Posner.").
That principle, however, does not avail Alexander. The message she sent the victim—that "[t]hey will get it too"—is instead like the statements held in Turner to qualify as "true threats" because they expressed an intent to commit harm. These were that certain federal judges "deserve to be killed"; that "[i]f they are allowed to get away with this by surviving, other Judges will act the same way"; and that "[t]hese Judges deserve to be made such an example of as to send a message to the entire judiciary: Obey the Constitution or die."
Significant, too, Alexander attached a photograph of the victim's minor children, establishing her knowledge of their identity, and she sent the message directly to the victim, rather than posting it in a forum where the victim might not alert to it. On the basis of limited materials at hand—the message and attachment—a reasonable jury could find Alexander's statement to the victim that her children "will get it" to express an intent to do physical harm to them, not a mere "vague" desire that the children be injured, and thus to "constitute[ ] a threat or a true threat." …
Moreover, contrary to Alexander's premise, § 875(c) does not require that the defendant "specifically intend to carry out the threat." And to the extent that Alexander defends that the statement was too euphemistic and/or insufficiently specific to support a conviction, the case law is against her….
[W]ithout an evidentiary record, it is premature for the Court to assess whether, as Alexander argues, her message could only be understood as non-threatening commentary protected by the First Amendment…. [T]hat argument "reduces to a question of evidentiary sufficiency, i.e., was the evidence sufficient to prove 'true threats' falling outside First Amendment protection?" Conceivably, the trial evidence may support that Alexander "engaged solely in protected speech … [b]ut this is a matter of proof that cannot be resolved at this stage of the proceedings." …
{At trial, the parties will be at liberty to offer additional admissible evidence as to the context of this message, which may inform a jury's assessment of whether it was a true threat. In this case, the Government proffered at a pretrial conference and in briefing that the ICE official to whom the victim is married was doxxed—i.e., his personal information was publicly shared—roughly contemporaneously with the charged communication.
The defense, meanwhile, notes that the communication occurred on the same day that the New York Times published an article documenting the separation of immigrant families, and in particular ICE's deportation of a six-year-old girl and her mother. For purposes of this decision, the Court does not consider these proffers, but is mindful that evidence speaking to Alexander's motivations could be received and could bear on the "true threat" inquiry.}
Patrick J. Gallagher represents the government.
UPDATE 11/11/26 10:34 am: I originally erroneously said in the post title the threats alleged in the indictment were to the officer's husband and children; of course, they were sent to the officer's wife (listed as the victim in the indictment) and threatened the children. I've corrected the title accordingly; my apologies for the mistake.