One person was killed and two wounded in a shooting on Wednesday at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the US city of Dallas, officials said.
The suspected gunman, who opened fire on the ICE facility from an adjacent building, is dead, the Dallas police department said in a post on X.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
“While we don’t know motive yet, we know that our ICE law enforcement is facing unprecedented violence against them,” Noem said on X. “It must stop.”
FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo on X of what he said were the suspect’s unspent shell casings that showed one with the words “ANTI-ICE” written along the side.
“While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an ideological motive behind this attack,” Patel wrote.
Local television station Fox4 said the three people shot were detainees in ICE custody.
It said the gunman was a man on the roof of a building who shot himself as law enforcement agents approached.
At a news briefing in Dallas, officials disclosed the existence of the shell casings but emphasized that the investigation was still in its early stages. Authorities were treating the attack as an “act of targeted violence,” Joseph Rothrock, special agent-in-charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office, told reporters.
The suspect opened fire on the office from an adjacent building around 6:40 a.m. local time (1140 GMT), police said. Two people were transported to a hospital with gunshot wounds, while a third person died at the scene.
Law enforcement officers were not injured in the shooting, officials said. The shooting took place at an ICE field office, not a detention facility, where ICE officers conduct short-term processing of recently-arrested detainees.
“We’ve seen a lot of violence at ICE facilities, and this is not the first time that we’ve seen an attack, even this year at an ICE facility,” Sheahan said.
“The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop,” Vice President JD Vance JD Vance said on X. “I’m praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families.”
ICE is the government agency chiefly responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States.
After ICE immigration raids in Los Angeles spurred unrest and protests earlier this year, Trump dispatched the National Guard and Marines to the California city.
Another ICE facility in Texas was the target of an attack in July that left a police officer wounded in the neck.
Ten people have been charged for their roles in the attack at the ICE centre in the town of Alvarado.
According to a criminal complaint, the assailants, dressed in black military-style clothing, shot fireworks at the ICE facility and spray-painted “Traitor” and “ICE Pig” on cars and a guard structure.
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“It looked like it might have been a sniper or some sort of a long-form shot,” Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, told Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” earlier on Wednesday.
The Alvarado incident came just days before a man armed with an assault rifle opened fire at a US Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas.
The 27-year-old man fired dozens of rounds from an assault rifle at the entrance of the Border Patrol annex before being shot dead.
Two police officers and a Border Patrol employee were injured.
The Trump administration’s aggressive use of ICE agents as part of its crackdown on undocumented immigrants has sparked outcries from Democrats and liberal activists. ICE detention facilities have increasingly become sites of conflict, with heavily armed agents deploying pepper ball guns, tear gas and other chemical agents in clashes with protesters.
An ICE facility in suburban Chicago, where protesters have gathered daily since a Trump administration immigration surge began earlier this month, erected fencing on Monday after several demonstrators, including the mayor of Evanston, Illinois, were injured in a clash with agents last week.