A gunman fired at a Dallas immigration field office on Wednesday, killing one detainee and critically wounding two more, before killing himself in what authorities called an indiscriminate attack on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Here’s what we know about the attack so far:
One detainee has been killed, with two others in critical condition. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said previously that two detainees had been killed and one injured, but issued a corrected statement. The Dallas police chief, Daniel Comeaux, said that the FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The shooter died from a “self-inflicted gun wound”, according to the DHS secretary, Kristi Noem.
The DHS said no members of law enforcement were hurt in the attack. But Comeaux also said that officials would not be releasing the identities of any victims at this time.
DHS officials say this was “an attack on Ice law enforcement”. At both today’s press conference and in a statement, law enforcement said that shell casings found near the shooter had “anti-Ice” messaging on them.
The shooter has been identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, according to NBC News – which cited several senior law enforcement officials.
Dallas police said that shots were fired “from an adjacent building”. The DHS later added that the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. All three victims were inside the van at the time the gunman opened fire.
The Dallas field office where the shooting occurred is used for short-term processing of people in custody. The victims may have been recently arrested by Ice. The facility is along Interstate 35 East, south-west of a large commercial airport serving the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, and just blocks from hotels catering to airport travelers.
Despite the fact that no federal agents were wounded in the shooting, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, called the attack an “assassination”. For her part, Noem said that “these horrendous killings must serve as a wake-up call to the far left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences”.
Donald Trump instantly politicized the shooting, claiming in a social media post that it “is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to ‘Nazis.’”
The vice-president, JD Vance, claimed without evidence that the shooting was carried out by “a violent leftwing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”. While the FBI has said that authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, officials have neither confirmed a motive nor corroborated Vance’s claims about the shooter’s ideological background.
