Early Wednesday morning, a sniper from a rooftop fired multiple rounds at immigrants being transferred at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office in Dallas, Texas. As of this writing at least one detained immigrant has been killed, and two others are seriously injured.
So far, the names of the immigrants killed/injured have not been released by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Mexican Consulate General in Dallas confirmed one of those critically injured is from Mexico.
The killing of at least one immigrant on Wednesday marks at least the 16th killing of a person while in the custody of the immigration gestapo this year.
Police claim the shooter, 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, took his own life with the rifle used in the attack as police were closing in on him. Reports indicate that Jahn did not have a violent history but was previously arrested in Collin County, Texas, in 2015 for a marijuana possession charge.
Police claim to have also recovered Jahn’s car, a blue Toyota Corolla. On the rear passenger panel of the vehicle, a paper map of the continental United States was affixed. The map featured large black blots across much of the country and was captioned: “Radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations have passed over these areas more than 2x since 1951.”
As of this writing, no motive has been advanced to explain the shooting. While only immigrants were injured or killed, it is unclear if Jahn was targeting immigrants or ICE agents. Photos indicate multiple rounds were fired not only at the van carrying the immigrants but also at the building itself.
While there is still much not known about the shooter or his motives, this has not prevented the Trump administration and Republicans from seizing on the killing of immigrants to attack their political opponents and advance their fascist political agenda. Similar to the shooting of fascist political operative Charlie Kirk, the Dallas attack is being used by the ruling class to attack the democratic rights of everyone.
Less than two hours after the attack began, FBI Director Kash Patel claimed there was an “idealogical [sic] motive behind this attack.” Patel posted a picture of five cartridges on the wet pavement. On one the cartridges the phrase “ANTI-ICE” was written in a blue marker.
It is unclear if Jahn wrote this message. “ANTI-ICE” is a not a popular slogan used by opponents of ICE or Trump’s mass deportation operation.
In an interview with Reuters, Jason Jahn, Joshua’s brother, said Joshua was not interested in politics and did not express either anti-ICE or anti-immigration views. Jason said he had “never once heard him talk about ICE” and was shocked by the alleged inscription on the bullets.
Less than two weeks ago, following the killing of Charlie Kirk, Republicans claimed one of the bullets inscribed by the shooter indicated clear “antifascist” ideology. Once the full text on the cartridge was revealed, however, it was confirmed that the shooter was not motivated by antifascist politics but was instead referencing a popular video game.
The New York Times reported that Jahn had an “extensive online record,” including two Reddit accounts where he talked about “video games, cars, ‘South Park’ and marijuana.” The Times reported that Jahn lived with his parents in a far north Dallas suburb “as recently as a few months ago.”
Following the attack, local news captured FBI agents outside the Dallas-area home, as well as a home tied to Jahn’s family in Durant, Oklahoma, on Wednesday afternoon. The Associated Press reported that a spokesperson for Collin College in McKinney, Texas, confirmed that a person named Joshua Jahn took classes at the school “various times” between 2013 and 2018. The AP also reported that in 2017, Jahn worked a legal marijuana farm in Washington as a harvester.
Ryan Sanderson, owner of the farm, told the AP, “He’s a young kid a thousand miles from home, didn’t really seem to have any direction, living out of his car at such a young age.” Sanderson did not recall Jahn “being that abnormal. He didn’t seem to fight with anyone or cause trouble. He kept his head down and stayed working.” Sanderson told the AP he tried to keep Jahn on the farm longer because he “felt bad for him.”
While no clear motive has emerged, this has not prevented Republicans, including President Donald Trump, from designating the killer as a politically motivated left-wing extremist. On his social media account Trump fumed:
This is despicable! The Brave Men and Women of ICE are just trying to do their jobs, and remove the “WORST of the WORST” Criminals out of our Country, but they are facing an unprecedented increase in threats, violence, and attacks by Deranged Radical Leftists. This violence 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 continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat. We have already declared ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization, and I will be signing an Executive Order this week to dismantle these Domestic Terrorism Networks. I AM CALLING ON ALL DEMOCRATS TO STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE AND AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT, RIGHT NOW! The Trump Administration is fully committed to backing Law Enforcement, Strong Borders, securing our Homeland, deporting Violent Illegal Criminals, and fully rooting out the Left Wing Domestic Terrorism that is terrorizing our Country. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
On X, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted roughly an hour after the attack began that there were “multiple injuries and fatalities” without clarifying that none of those injured were police agents.
She added: “While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them. It must stop.”
In a Fox News appearance following the shooting, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Patricia McLaughlin said it was “incumbent” on Democrats, including “Gavin Newsom, AOC, Hakeem Jeffries,” to “tone down the rhetoric,” which she said was “directly contributing to the violence against our law enforcement.”
Speaking in front of a black police urban assault vehicle in Concord, North Carolina, Vice President JD Vance claimed the shooter was a “violent left-wing extremist” and that “there is some evidence that we have that’s not yet public but we know this person was politically motivated, they were politically motivated to go after law enforcement. They were politically motivated to go after people who were enforcing our border. And I think that is the most disgusting thing.”
Hours after this speech was given, neither Vance nor law enforcement have produced any corroborating evidence that the shooter was part of a left-wing group or had a particular disdain for police.
This did not prevent Vance from blaming left-wing opponents of the Trump-Vance administration: “If you want to stop political violence, stop attacking our law enforcement as the gestapo. If you want to stop political violence stop telling your supporters that everybody who disagrees with you is a Nazi.”
In 2016, before he excised what little was left of his ability to speak a truth (and before he became a political figure in the Republican Party), Vance publicly and privately characterized Trump as “America’s Hitler.”
In a follow-up interview with NewsNation, Vance again asserted without evidence, “We do feel pretty confident that this was a left-wing motivated political attack.”
Following this shooting and Kirk’s assassination, Vance said, “I think in particular, my Democrat colleagues need to ask some very hard questions about why it is that folks from their side of the political aisle seem to be engaged in these politically motivated attacks.”
Vance called on Democrats to “police some of the violent rhetoric” on their side.
ICE agents are widely hated not because of Democratic Party rhetoric, which is non-existent or effusive in praise of ICE and the police, but because broad sections of the population, who still support democratic rights, including the right to asylum, are outraged over the daily attacks on workers and their families.
Millions of people in the US, including workers and students, are hostile to the heavily armed, masked thugs kidnapping their co-workers, friends and family members. And they suspect that these forces will soon be turned against them the moment they resist the increasingly fascist Trump regime and the criminal financial oligarchy he represents. The police, including immigration agents, do not exist to protect the working class but to wage war on working class families and workers.
Far from trying to “tone down the rhetoric,” Trump administration officials, and the official DHS social media accounts, regularly post fascistic content glorifying their criminal operations while dehumanizing immigrants. A video posted on X by DHS on September 22 compares immigrants to Pokemon cards, using the song, “Catch ‘em all,” set to violent imagery of federal agents blowing open doors and placing people in chains. Following the post, DHS began posting Pokemon-style cards featuring immigrants taken by the agency along with their alleged crimes.
As of September 7, over 58,000 people were being held in ICE concentration camps across the country. Over 70 percent of those held have no criminal record.
Those kidnapped by ICE are forced to languish for weeks, if not months in hellish concentration camps where they are routinely denied medical care and legal advice. While the government claims those kidnapped by immigration gestapo are the “criminals” in reality, workers and students, such as Rümeysa Öztürk, Mahmoud Khalil and Momadou Taal have been targeted for deportation for the “crime” of voicing opposition to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.