I think the only conclusion that I'm jumping to is that it was malicious. At best, it's a bad and very likely unconstitutional policy.

Framing it as "asking" is dishonest- a cease and desist is a demand that you stop with an implied legal action if you don't. It didn't say "hey if this progresses, you might be criminally liable"- it calls out this specific tweet as potentially criminal and threatens federal charges.

As a side note, I tried to read the tweet again and it's been deleted, so who knows. Maybe all this was made up and maybe there was more to it or maybe DHS disappeared her. Either way, without more context I'm 100% unwilling to budge on this being an abuse of power.