A sniper perched on a nearby rooftop fired at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas on Wednesday morning, killing one detainee and critically injuring two others, the Department of Homeland Security said. It was the latest act of violence to raise fears that politically motivated attacks are increasing in the United States.
The authorities said that the gunman killed himself, and that no law enforcement officers were injured in the attack.
R. Joseph Rothrock, the special agent in charge of the F.B.I.’s Dallas field office, said that rounds found near the shooter were marked with messages that were “anti-ICE in nature.” Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, posted a photo on social media showing a rifle ammunition clip, with one bullet inscribed with the words “ANTI-ICE.” The New York Times has not independently verified details about the writing on the ammunition.
Mr. Rothrock said that F.B.I. was investigating the shooting as “an act of targeted violence.”
Three people familiar with the investigation identified the shooter as Joshua Jahn. Mr. Jahn was 29, one of the people said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not identify any of the victims as of Wednesday afternoon. It initially said two people had been killed before revising that figure to one. One of the detainees in critical condition was a Mexican national, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said.
Homeland Security, which ICE is a part of, said in a statement that the gunman fired “indiscriminately” at the ICE office, including at a van in a sally port where the detainees were shot. Officials noted that it was the third shooting at a federal immigration facility in Texas in recent months.
On July 4, two shooters opened fire from a wooded area next to an ICE detention facility in Alvarado, injuring a police officer who was hit in the neck, according to prosecutors. Three days later, a gunman fired dozens of shots at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection building in McAllen, injuring three people, including two officers, before he was fatally shot by law enforcement authorities. On Aug. 25, a man was arrested after making a bomb threat against the ICE office in Dallas.
Federal officials linked the shooting on Wednesday to heated political rhetoric denouncing ICE agents who have been carrying out President Trump’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration.
Beyond the message on the bullet, the authorities did not release any information about the shooter’s possible motivations, or his background. But Mr. Trump, on his social media site, attacked “Deranged Radical Leftists,” and Vice President JD Vance said the administration was confident the gunman was a “violent left-wing extremist.”
“There’s some evidence that we have that’s not yet public, but we know this person was politically motivated,” he said at a speech in North Carolina, without elaborating on the evidence. “They were politically motivated to go after law enforcement. They were politically motivated to go after people who are enforcing our border. And I think that is the most disgusting thing — the very people who keep us safe ought to be honored and protected and praised by Democrats and Republicans alike.”
Mr. Jahn’s online profile appeared to show little obvious interest in politics. On at least two Reddit accounts, he discussed video games, cars, the television show “South Park” and marijuana. In 2015, he was charged with selling marijuana. He was released from court supervision a few years later, and the case was dismissed.
He was raised with a brother and a sister in a far north suburb of Dallas. Records show he voted in a Democratic primary in Texas in March 2020. He was registered as an independent in Oklahoma, where his parents own property in Durant, 100 miles north of Dallas.
The shooting took place at about 6:40 a.m. at an ICE field office in northwestern Dallas, about a mile and a half from Dallas Love Field Airport. The building is typically used to process detainees after they’ve been arrested and before they are transported to a long-term detention facility. More than 8,400 people have spent time in the holding room inside the building since Mr. Trump took office.
Witnesses described seeing smoke coming from a building near the ICE office and hearing a series of gunshots.
“It was one shot after another after another after another,” said Denise Robleto, 38, who was in a van in a parking lot waiting for her mother to return from an ICE check-in as part of her asylum case. “But I could not leave — my mother was inside.”
Officers eventually arrived, and she was reunited with her mother. Ms. Robleto said she was concerned the shooting would inject more tension into a Latino community already living under the constant fear of ICE raids.
Arianny Sierra, 25, who was waiting outside with her 9-year-old son while her husband went into the ICE office, said she thought she heard fireworks. Then she noticed sparks and smoke coming from a nearby building and realized they were gunshots.
She panicked, grabbed her son and jumped into their car. They crouched in the front seat until officers arrived.
The shooting intensified fears that the country’s acidic political climate has been fueling a rise in politically motivated violence.
Two weeks ago, a gunman fatally shot the conservative activist Charlie Kirk while he was speaking at a university in Utah. Prosecutors said the gunman had written private messages about Mr. Kirk’s “hatred,” and that his mother told investigators her son had recently shifted toward the political left and had become “more pro-gay and trans-rights oriented.”
In June, Melissa Hortman, a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota, and her husband were fatally shot inside their home. In April, an arsonist set fire to the official residence of Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania after he and his family had finished celebrating the first night of Passover. Last year, Mr. Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt at a political rally in Butler, Pa.
Since Mr. Trump took office, ICE has been a focus of intense protests nationwide, some of which have been violent.
Over the summer, hundreds of people in Los Angeles clashed with law enforcement over Mr. Trump’s crackdown on immigration. Some launched fireworks toward the police, and officers fired back with pepper balls and other weapons. Mr. Trump deployed 700 Marines and thousands of National Guard troops to the city.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, said in a statement said the shooting would not stop his state’s work with Homeland Security and ICE “to arrest, detain and deport any individuals in this country illegally — without interruption.”
Texas Democrats joined in the denunciation of the shooting.
U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro of San Antonio called for Americans to “reject extremism in our politics.” Representative Jasmine Crockett of Dallas condemned the shooting, but said that “rhetoric used to dehumanize and demonize immigrants in this country has led to increased hate crime incidents.”
Leaders of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino civil rights organization that has been decrying the mass deportation of Latinos, said on Wednesday that violence was never the answer.
“This tragedy shows what happens when anger overtakes reason,” said Gabriel Rosales, the group’s state director in Texas. “No family should suffer such pain.”
Reporting was contributed by Jazmine Ulloa, Ruth Graham, Allison McCann, Chris Hippensteel, Edgar Sandoval, Tyler Pager, Mary Beth Gahan, Kitty Bennett and Thomas Gibbons-Neff.