A fatal shooting at a federal facility in Texas on Wednesday is underscoring heightened threats to immigration officials amid a highly divisive rise in immigration enforcement.
Dallas Police told reporters that they received an “assist officer” call around 6:40 a.m. local time. After they arrived at the scene, police said they found a suspect had opened fire on the Dallas field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from an adjacent building. One victim died at the scene and two others were hospitalized, officials said; the suspected shooter is also dead.
Officials say no law enforcement officials were injured in the shooting. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News that “it looks like the detainees were among the victims.”
Many details around the Wednesday incident remain unknown. But referencing early evidence at a press conference, the special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Dallas, Joe Rothrock, said rounds found near the suspected shooter “contained messages that were anti-ICE in nature.” FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo on X of what he called “unspent shell casings” with “ANTI-ICE” written on it. No law enforcement members were hurt, said Mr. Rothrock.
“There are people out there who are seeing what is being placed online, and they’re coming and they’re doing acts of violence against ICE employees,” said Joshua Johnson, acting field office director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Dallas, at the press conference. “The rhetoric has to stop.”
He noted that this was the second time he’s had to speak with media about a shooter at one of his ICE facilities.
“While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them. It must stop,” said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a statement. “Please pray for the victims and their families.”
ICE has field offices across the country. These are administrative spaces that have also been used, controversially, to temporarily hold immigrants. At the same Dallas Field Office in August, authorities said they arrested a suspect who arrived at the entrance and made a bomb threat.
The Wednesday shooting comes as Homeland Security points to mounting assaults against immigration authorities nationally, including in Texas.
Beyond the Dallas bomb threat, a group of suspects was charged with attempted murder tied to an attack on a detention center in Alvarado, Texas, in July. That same month, several hundred miles south, a suspect was shot dead by law enforcement after he opened fire at a Border Patrol facility in McAllen, injuring three law enforcement officials, DHS said.
ICE leadership says the agency is boosting security by increasing the number of personnel it sends out together based on such threats, especially in areas it considers “sanctuary” jurisdictions, where there is limited cooperation between local and federal authorities.
“Instead of sending the normal four to five officers to go make the arrest on the street, we now have to double that number, because the arrest teams actually have to have security,” Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, told the Monitor in an interview this summer.
Critics of ICE say its officers and agents are using outsized force against protesters and subjects of arrest – often while hiding their identities behind face masks. Some on the left, including Democratic officials, have made comparisons between ICE and Nazis, which Trump officials and allies have condemned.
“To every politician who is using rhetoric demonizing ICE and demonizing CBP: Stop,” said GOP Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas at Wednesday’s press conference. CBP stands for Customs and Border Protection, which includes the Border Patrol.
“This has very real consequences,” said Senator Cruz. “Look, in America, we disagree – that’s fine, that’s the democratic process. But your political opponents are not Nazis.”
