Dallas ICE Shooting: What We Know about the Shooter and Victims

A gunman opened fire on a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas just after sunrise Wednesday, killing one detainee and critically wounding two others before turning the gun on himself, authorities said. No law enforcement officers were injured.

Police were called around 6:40 a.m. to the ICE field office north of downtown. Investigators say the shooter — described by officials as a “sniper” — took up a position on a nearby rooftop and fired into the complex, striking a van in the sally port where detainees are unloaded for processing. Inside the building, agents later found office windows pocked with rounds and spent casings scattered around the entry area.

The gunman died from a self-inflicted wound. Several people briefed on the investigation identified him as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn of the Dallas suburbs. Public records indicate past ties to North Texas and Oklahoma, a 2016 marijuana delivery case that ended with probation, and little online footprint beyond posts about video games, cars and pop culture. His politics, investigators say, are unclear.

Officials have not released the names of the victims. Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said one of the wounded is a Mexican national and that consular staff are seeking hospital access and supporting the family. Both surviving victims remained in critical condition on Wednesday.

What pushed the gunman to the rooftop remains unanswered. Homeland Security officials have called it a targeted attack and pointed to ammunition recovered at the scene stamped with the phrase “ANTI-ICE” in blue lettering. The FBI’s Dallas office says it is investigating the shooting as an act of targeted violence. Beyond that, authorities haven’t offered a motive, and key details are still being pieced together.

The facility itself is one of 25 ICE field offices nationwide and among the busiest. Half the building houses cubicles and interview rooms where immigrants check in with officers. The other half is a short-term intake area: fingerprints, biometrics, paperwork, then either release or a brief stay in a “hold room” before transfer to a longer-term site. On a typical day, the hold rooms cycle through roughly 55 people, most for less than 24 hours. Outside, a small group of locals has gathered weekly in recent months for prayer vigils, holding “families belong together” signs on the sidewalk.

Security is now being stepped up across the system. Following the attack, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directed enhanced protocols at ICE facilities nationwide. The agency was already on edge. On July 4, an officer was shot and wounded outside an ICE detention center in Alvarado, south of Fort Worth; more than a dozen suspects have been charged in what authorities described as an ambush. Three days later, a gunman opened fire at a Customs and Border Protection station in McAllen, injuring three people, two of them officers. The Dallas field office also received a bomb threat last month.

The political temperature spiked immediately after Wednesday’s shooting. President Donald Trump blasted “Deranged Radical Leftists” on social media and demanded Democrats “STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE,” citing the recovered “ANTI-ICE” marking as proof of political intent. Vice President JD Vance labeled the attack politically motivated in remarks in North Carolina, while offering no additional evidence. Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey, whose district includes parts of Dallas–Fort Worth, called it “disturbing” that officials were “already exploiting this tragedy to stoke fear, division, and anger,” urging leaders to lower the temperature. Senate Republicans like Ted Cruz echoed appeals for calm and against dehumanizing language.

The broader backdrop is months of protests and confrontations around immigration enforcement under Trump’s second term. Demonstrations outside detention facilities in cities from Los Angeles to New York have sometimes turned tense. In New York last week, federal officers arrested 11 Democratic elected officials after they demanded access to ICE holding cells. The department, for its part, says assaults on its officers have risen sharply amid charged rhetoric.

If the Dallas attack followed a grim playbook — an early-morning ambush, fast police response, a suspect found dead nearby — the location and the victims complicate the narrative. All those hit were detainees, not officers. The rounds tore through a van and office glass, not tactical vests. Whatever the shooter’s intent, investigators say, he fired “indiscriminately,” and the casualties were people in custody who had yet to see a judge or even leave the intake bay.

Daylight brought the painstaking work that follows any mass shooting. FBI technicians combed the rooftop they believe the gunman used. Agents hauled a skateboard and other items from a sedan parked at an exterior stairwell. Inside the ICE building, staff taped off shattered windows and swept up glass. Outside, the prayer-vigil regulars drifted by, shaken but resolute.

The questions now are familiar and fraught. Was this the act of a lone, angry man or a sign of something more organized? Do the “ANTI-ICE” markings point to an ideology, or are they a provocation meant to inflame? Can Washington thread the needle between ramping up security and escalating the rhetoric that leaders on both sides warn is fueling violence?

Answers will take time. For the families of the victims — and the thousands of people who move through that Dallas field office every year — what matters immediately is simpler: whether the wounded pull through, whether the building feels safe to enter again, and whether the next sunrise brings calm instead of gunfire.

The New York Times, the Washington Post, Al Jazeera, and the Hill contributed to this report.