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A shooter with a rifle opened fire from a nearby roof onto a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) location in Dallas on Wednesday, killing two detainees and wounding another before taking his own life, authorities said.
The exact motivation of the attack was not immediately known.
The FBI said at a morning news conference that ammunition found at the scene contained anti-ICE messaging. The head of the agency, Kash Patel, released a photo on social media that shows a bullet containing the words “ANTI-ICE” written in what appears to be marker.
“The shooter fired indiscriminately at the ICE building, including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement.
The detainee who survived was in critical condition at a hospital, DHS said.
The shooting occurred at the local field office in Dallas, where agents conduct short-term processing of those in custody.
DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News that no ICE agents were injured.
“We believe he was shooting at law enforcement and detainees from an apartment building,” McLaughlin said. “Detainees were among the victims of the shooting.”
The FBI said during a news conference Wednesday morning that it was investigating the shooting as “an act of targeted violence.”
The attack is the latest public targeted killing in the U.S. and comes two weeks after conservative leader Charlie Kirk was killed by a rifle-wielding shooter on a roof.
Officers first responded to a call to assist an officer on North Stemmons Freeway around 6:40 a.m. local time Wednesday and a preliminary investigation determined that a person opened fire at a government building from an adjacent building, Dallas police spokesperson Jonathan E. Maner said in an earlier email.
Edwin Cardona, an immigrant from Venezuela, said he was entering the ICE building with his son for an appointment around 6:20 a.m. when he heard gunshots.
An agent gathered people who were inside the building, took them to a more secure area and explained that there was an active shooter in the area, Cardona said.
“I was afraid for my family because my family was outside. I felt terrible because I thought something could happen to them. Thank God, no,” Cardona said.
Cardona said his family was brought into the building and they were later reunited.
Dozens of emergency vehicles were seen along a highway near the ICE facility, which sits along Interstate 35 East, just southwest of Dallas Love Field, a large commercial airport serving the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, and blocks from hotels catering to airport travellers.
Traffic cameras near the scene show six lanes of a normally busy freeway completely empty, with cars and semi-trailers at a halt on an interstate exit.
Shortly after the shooting, U.S. Vice-President JD Vance posted on the social platform X that “the obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop.”
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, from Texas, continued in that direction, calling for an end to politically motivated violence during a Wednesday news briefing.
“To every politician who is using rhetoric, demonizing ICE and demonizing [Customs and Border Protection]: Stop,” Cruz told reporters.
But immediately after the news conference in which officials refused to say whether the victims included detainees, Democratic U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey called in to Dallas’ WFAA-TV newscast and told them he was “absolutely sickened” by some officials’ comments.
“If they are trying to control this narrative and they don’t want migrants to be the victim in this story, then they may want to slow-walk giving us any information about this, so they can still keep on talking about attacks on ICE,” Veasey said.
Other attacks in Texas
The incident comes several months after a Fourth of July attack at a Texas immigration detention centre injured a police officer, who was shot in the neck.
Attackers dressed in black military-style clothing opened fire outside the Prairieland Detention Facility in Alvarado, southwest of Dallas, federal prosecutors have said. At least 11 people have been charged in connection with that attack.
A separate attack took place several days later, when a heavily armed man opened fire on federal agents with an assault rifle at a U.S. Border Patrol facility in Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border, injuring a police officer before authorities shot and killed him.