Authorities said on Thursday that the words of the suspect in the shooting on Wednesday at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Texas were “definitively anti-Ice” but said that they did not find evidence that the suspect was a member of “any specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.
At a news conference on Thursday afternoon, Texas authorities provided more details on the shooting investigation describing messages and notes they found at the suspect’s residence.
The shooting, described by the FBI as coming after a “high degree of planning” , occurred early on Wednesday at a facility in Dallas, with a spray of bullets fired from a rooftop hitting a building and an Ice transportation van, killing one Ice detainee who was inside the vehicle and badly injuring two others.
Nancy Larson, acting US attorney for the northern district of Texas, said on Thursday that authorities found a collection of notes at the suspect’s residence, with one of the notes allegedly stating: “Yes, it was just me.”
“Notably, these loose notes included a game plan of the attack and target areas at the facility,” Larson said. “He called the Ice employees ‘people showing up to collect a dirty paycheck’.”
Larson said that the suspect “wrote that he intended to maximize lethality against Ice personnel and to maximize property damage at the facility” and said that it “seems that he did not intend to kill the detainees or harm them. It’s clear from these notes that he was targeting Ice agents and Ice personnel”.
“He also hoped his actions would give Ice agents real terror of being gunned down, and he did this to induce constant stress in their lives,” Larson said.
Among his papers, Larson said that they also found a handwritten note in which the suspect “expressed his hatred for the federal government”.
Larson also revealed that the suspect was seen on footage around 3am on Wednesday driving with a large ladder on his car, that they believe he used to position himself on top of the building.
The shooting, authorities said, began around 6.30am on Wednesday, and officials saidthat based on their investigation, they believe that the suspect acted alone, but stressed that their investigation is still ongoing.
At the news conference, the authorities also identified the suspect as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, of Fairview, Texas. Officials have said that he killed himself at the scene.
Larson told reporters that the suspects words were “definitively anti-Ice” but said that authorities found no evidence that the suspect was a member of any “specific group or entity, nor did he mention any specific government agency other than Ice”.
Marcos Charles, an Ice official, also said on Thursday that the suspect used “Ice tracking apps” to monitor the movement of federal agents.
Joseph Rothrock, the special agent in charge of the Dallas FBI field office, added that the suspect had legally obtained the firearm he used in the shooting in August of this year.
Earlier on Thursday, the FBI director, Kash Patel, said in a statement that the alleged perpetrator downloaded a document titled “Dallas County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management” containing a list of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities.
No Ice staff were hit in the attack, which the Trump administration condemned as being an action aimed at law enforcement and is urgently investigating, amid a surge in political violence in the US.
On Thursday, Patel said that the suspect had conducted multiple searches of ballistics and had searched the “Charlie Kirk Shot Video” in recent days, referring back to the murder of the rightwing activist and youth politics leader who was shot dead at an event in Utah earlier this month.
Patel also said that between 18 August and 24 August, the suspect searched apps that tracked the presence of Ice agents. The FBI director added that authorities also recovered a handwritten note which read, ‘Hopefully this will give Ice agents real terror, to think, “is there a sniper”? about to fire from a roof.”
Patel added: “Further accumulated evidence to this point indicates a high degree of pre-attack planning.”
The identities of the victims in the Dallas attack have not yet been named , although the two men wounded were said to remain in the hospital in critical condition.
The mayor of Dallas, Eric Johnson, a Democrat turned Republican, called the shooting “really, really sad” in an interview with CNN on Thursday.
“I think the trend that we’re seeing of increasing political violence in this country, and yesterday’s … hit close to home and we’re concerned.”
Johnson added: “The division that seems to be leading to some folks taking these very, very unfortunate and violent steps to try to bring about policy changes [is] just wrong and it’s scary.”
Johnson condemned “the vilification of Ice”, the federal agency that has been stirring up protests amid the Trump administration’s anti-immigration, mass deportation agenda, with raids on immigrants across the country and a surge of detentions.
The new developments come as Donald Trump has blamed the shooting on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party, without citing official evidence of any specific affiliations, party politics or motives of the suspect.
The US president wrote on social media the day of the Dallas attack: “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.’”
JD Vance made a political comment before a suspect had even been named or many details of the victims released, saying that the attack was carried out by “a violent leftwing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.
