Ten people have been charged with attempted murder after allegedly ambushing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents in Texas on 4 July.
Federal prosecutors said attackers drew the agents out of an Ice detention center in Alvarado, Texas, with fireworks and by vandalizing vehicles. They allegedly shot a police officer in the neck and unloaded between 20 and 30 rounds on immigration agents, and were later apprehended by local law enforcement near the scene.
“It was a planned ambush with the intent to kill Ice correction officers,” said Nancy Larson, US attorney for the northern district of Texas, at a press conference on Monday. “Make no mistake, this was not a so-called peaceful protest – it was indeed an ambush.”
Larson said the assailants began shooting fireworks outside the Prairieland Ice Detection Center, about an hour south of Dallas in Alvarado, Texas, at approximately 10.37pm. The fireworks drew agents outside and found the group spray painting vehicles with “Ice pig”, “traitor” and “other profanity”, according to Larson.
A gunman, who was positioned in the woods away from the group, then fired a shot at a local police officer who was also on the scene and hit him in the “neck area”, Larson said. She added that a second gunman unloaded between 20 and 30 rounds on Ice corrections officers, who she said were unarmed.
“This was an egregious attack on federal and local law enforcement officers and it is part of an increasing trend of violence against them,” Larson said, adding that a jammed AR-style rifle was later found abandoned in the woods.
Ten people, most of them from the Dallas-Fort Worth area, were charged with three counts of attempted murder. An 11th “co-conspirator” faces obstruction of justice charges.
Larson said local sheriff’s deputies caught the alleged assailants in two separate vehicles near the facility, both with tactical-style vests and weapons. One group of seven alleged assailants was also covered in mud.
“We found masks, goggles, tactical gloves” in a residence, said Larson, along with “additional body armor … spray paint, fireworks and again insurrectionist materials”.
The attack comes after police said a man with an assault rifle shot at officers leaving a Texas border patrol facility on Monday, before being killed by law enforcement. Hours before the attack his father told police he was looking for his son, who he said had psychological issues and was carrying weapons.
