After an immigrant detainee was killed on Wednesday by a sniper at a federal facility in Dallas, the Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, blamed the shooting on rhetoric against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers carrying out the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
“For months, we’ve been warning politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric about ICE law enforcement before someone was killed,” she said in a social media post. “These horrendous killings must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about ICE has consequences.”
On the other side of a tense national immigration debate, some Democratic members of Congress in Texas and leaders with several of the top national immigrant and civil rights organizations did not disagree: the harmful rhetoric needs to stop — against law enforcement officers, and against immigrants.
The F.B.I. said the gunman in Dallas died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and left behind ammunition that bore the phrase “ANTI-ICE” in blue writing. But The New York Times has not independently verified federal officials’ assertion that the shooter was targeting ICE.
In some social media feeds and activist circles, agents have been called “Nazis” and “fascists” while elsewhere, prominent critics have used pointed, if less inflammatory language. Gov. Gavin Newsom of California this week said that masked agents grabbing immigrants off the streets were “authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government.”
Opponents of the administration’s crackdown have said that the belligerent, incendiary tone had been set at the top by President Trump, who has referred to undocumented immigrants as “monsters” and pledged to wage war on American cities that did not bend to his administration’s hard-line immigration agenda.
“My concern is that this anti-immigrant rhetoric has led us to this point,” said Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, an advocacy organization.
Along with the man killed, two other immigrant detainees were wounded in the shooting. No law enforcement officers were hit by the gunfire.
Battles over immigrant rights have been escalating on the streets and in the courts for months. Trump administration officials have sought to characterize many actions of immigrant rights lawyers and activists — including protests and know-your-rights presentations — as enabling illegal immigration and threatening to national security.
Law enforcement officers and federal immigration agents have faced off with activists and concerned residents who have sought to film their actions. In some of the most heated outbursts, some have yelled or cursed at agents and sought to physically block them from apprehending immigrants.
On Wednesday, Democrats and immigrant rights leaders who have heavily criticized ICE in recent months condemned the violence and urged people to lower the temperature of the immigration debate.
Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from San Antonio, called for Americans to “reject extremism in our politics.”
Others also took sharp, if measured, jabs at the administration. Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat of Dallas, also denounced the shooting but observed that “rhetoric used to dehumanize and demonize immigrants in this country has led to increased hate crime incidents.”
Juan Proaño, chief executive of the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights group, said in an interview that the shooting — and the administration’s response — would make it more difficult to hold ICE accountable. But he added it would not deter his group from continuing to challenge its immigration actions in court.
“Our community is literally under attack — and ICE cannot escape its responsibility to keep people in detention safe,” he said. “We will not be silenced, and we will not stop demanding accountability.”
J. David Goodman contributed reporting.