A sniper opened fire at a Texas ICE facility at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday morning while officers were transferring detainees. One detainee has been killed, and two have been wounded, ABC reports.
The shooter was armed with a rifle on the roof. When agents approached him, he shot and killed himself. Bullets found near him contained the message, “ANTI-ICE.”
One victim in critical condition has Mexican citizenship, the country’s foreign ministry said in a press release.
In an X post shortly after the shooting happened, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem wrote, “No enforcement officers were injured. There was a shooting this morning at the Dallas @ICEgov Field Office.”
Noem added that there is no known motive yet, but “our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them. It must stop.”
The suspect in the case is 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, who may have been living in Oklahoma, Fox 4 News Dallas reported. The suspect turned the gun on himself and was killed when authorities approached him after the shooting, police reported.
The shooting is being investigated as an act of ‘targeted violence’
At a press conference following the shooting in Texas, Joe Rothrock, special agent in charge at the scene, said, “Early evidence that we’ve seen from rounds that were found near the suspected shooter contain messages that are anti-ICE in nature.”
“I can confirm that the FBI is investigating this incident as an act of targeted violence,” he said.
Rothrock continued, “Again, this is just the most recent example of this type of attack. This will be a whole of government response. There will be no resource not utilized to bring all those individuals who are responsible to justice and hold them accountable.”
President Trump and Vance speak on political violence
On Truth Social, following the shooting, President Trump said the attack was the “result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to ‘Nazis.’”
In North Carolina, Vice President JD Vance echoed the president. “If you want to stop political violence, stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi,” he said.
He continued, “Look, just because we don’t support illegal aliens, we don’t want them to be executed by violent assassins engaged in political violence either.”
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said in an X post, “My team and I are closely monitoring the situation at the ICE Detention Facility in Dallas. We are praying for the swift recovery of those injured, and we are deeply grateful to the brave first responders who rushed to the scene.”
This shooting follows a viable bomb threat at the same location exactly one month ago.
This ICE facility has three or four holding cells where detainees are processed before being transferred to a detention center, a former ICE official told CNN. The facility usually only holds a couple dozen detainees at a time.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughin told Fox News, “So this location, it looks like it’s been targeted, and we don’t know how long this individual has been planning this act.”
“It looks like he could have been watching to look at the processing and see what happens on a day-to-day basis at this Dallas field office. But (these are) all answers that Homeland Security investigation is going to get down to the bottom of,” she said.