Political violence reared its head again Wednesday when a gunman attacked an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas, killing one migrant detainee and wounding two others before taking his own life.
Federal authorities said the “targeted violence” was the latest in a string of attacks on ICE. They found unfired ammunition near the shooter’s body with “Anti ICE” written on a casing.
The shooter took a position on a neighboring building and fired “indiscriminately” at the ICE office. Three migrants in a van pulling up to the office were hit, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.
One was killed and two others were wounded but alive Wednesday afternoon. The department previously said two had been killed.
No ICE personnel were hit.
“This vile attack was motivated by hatred for ICE,” Ms. Noem said. “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far left that their rhetoric about ICE has consequences.”
SEE ALSO: Dallas ICE shooter identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn
Dallas media identified the shooter as Joshua Jahns, 29. News helicopters captured images of agents outside his parents’ home in Collin County, north of Dallas.
The FBI said it was investigating the attack as “targeted violence.” Director Kash Patel posted a photo of an ammunition clip with the anti-ICE message inked in large blue block letters along the side of one casing.
Vice President J.D. Vance emphasized that the gunman’s bullets ended up killing migrants.
“Look, just because we don’t support illegal aliens, we don’t want them to be executed by violent assassins engaged in political violence,” he said.
President Trump called the shooting “despicable” and said ICE officers were “under grave threat.”
“This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to ‘Nazis,’” he wrote on social media.
He added, in all capital letters: “I am calling on all Democrats to stop this rhetoric against ICE and America’s law enforcement, right now!”
Government officials tied the shooting directly to the rise in anger at ICE, spawned by the agency’s increasingly active approach to arresting and deporting illegal immigrants, as well as Democrats’ fiery rhetoric.
Comparing ICE to Nazis or a “secret police” has become standard fare among Democratic leaders, who complain of masked agents swooping into neighborhoods to make arrests. One compared ICE to “slave patrols.” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee last year, called ICE a “modern-day Gestapo.”
Two weeks before the assault in Dallas, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated, renewing debate about overheated rhetoric and demonizing political adversaries.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said his city, and the country at large, “needs prayer.”
“There’s a lot going on right now in our country. A lot of it’s confusing. It’s a scary time,” he said, leading off a press conference about the shooting. He urged people not to jump to conclusions about the shooting and its motivations and called for “a little bit of restraint.”
Federal officials, however, said the focus of the attack spoke volumes.
“The takeaway from all of this is the rhetoric has to stop,” said Joshua Johnson, head of ICE’s Dallas office, who blamed anti-ICE sentiments spreading online. “It’s dangerous, and people are losing their lives.”
Part of that anti-ICE activity is an effort to dox officers, revealing their identities publicly to combat their use of masks during arrest operations.
Posters complaining about masked agents have sprung up in neighborhoods blocks from the U.S. Capitol. This weekend, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the No Secret Police Act, which bans law enforcement from using masks.
Federal officials said the masking ban can’t apply to U.S. government agencies.
Homeland Security Department officials say the masks are essential for officers and agents whose arrest targets can include illegal immigrant gang or smuggling cartel members.
Media have fueled the situation with sensationalist accounts of ICE purportedly arresting children.
In one account this week, NBC News reported that ICE was using a 5-year-old autistic child as a hostage to try to get her father to surrender. The outlet had to correct its story after Homeland Security said the illegal immigrant, with a record of arrests for domestic abuse and strangulation, sped away from officers and then abandoned his child in the vehicle as he rushed into his home.
Officers rescued the child and had local police come to her aid, federal officials said.
Attacks on ICE this year include a July 4 assault on a detention facility in Prairieland, Texas, where a police officer was shot and wounded.
A state judge in Wisconsin has been charged with concealing an illegal immigrant by ushering him out of her courthouse while an ICE arrest team was trying to arrest him. A congresswoman from New Jersey was charged with assault after she was caught on video striking ICE employees with her forearm during a dust-up at a detention center she was trying to investigate.
Overall, ICE reports a 1,000% increase in assaults on its officers under Mr. Trump.
Critics question those numbers, saying the department has refused to produce breakdowns.
ICE opponents say the agency has become too aggressive under Mr. Trump, going into communities to make arrests of rank-and-file illegal immigrants rather than focusing on the criminals the president said he wanted to target.
ICE data shows that about 65% of people the agency is arresting have criminal convictions or pending charges. That is down from 80% earlier this year and more than 90% with criminal records during the latter part of the Biden administration.
Homeland Security said it is on pace to set a record for deportations.
ICE has unshackled itself from many restrictions imposed by the Biden administration, including limits on who could be arrested and where they could be reached.
A federal judge in Los Angeles this summer ruled that the unshackling had resulted in ICE using unconstitutional means to target illegal immigrants. She ordered a halt to those arrests. The Supreme Court put that decision on hold.
Judges have questioned detention conditions at some ICE facilities.
More broadly, Democratic-led jurisdictions have urged residents to resist ICE and have circulated know-your-rights lists that have led to confusion about what sort of resistance is allowed. One common scenario is ICE targets refusing to exit their vehicles, leading to agents smashing windows and extracting migrants to carry out the arrest.
The Washington Times has documented a surge in cases of U.S. citizen bystanders interjecting themselves to try to thwart arrests.
Violence against ICE has long been an issue.
In 2019, someone shot through the window of the agency’s office in San Antonio.
Later that year, authorities fatally shot a man trying to ignite propane tanks at an ICE detention facility.
He left a manifesto with anti-ICE rhetoric that echoed the complaints of prominent Democrats at the time, saying he was striking against “the forces of evil” and calling ICE’s migrant detention “concentration camps.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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