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The Trump administration has blamed the “demonization” of immigration enforcement officers for recent episodes.
Sept. 24, 2025, 7:19 p.m. ET
The shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Dallas on Wednesday was the latest in a string of violent episodes directed at ICE facilities and officers, as the Trump administration ramps up its deportation campaign and adopts more confrontational tactics during arrests.
Wednesday’s shooting was the second this year at an ICE facility in Texas. In July, a police officer was shot outside an ICE detention center less than 40 miles from the Dallas facility. Last month, federal officials said a suspect had been arrested after making a bomb threat against the same facility in Dallas.
In recent months, demonstrations outside ICE facilities in Los Angeles, Illinois and New York led to confrontations with law enforcement officers and arrests. This month, an ICE officer fatally shot a man in the Chicago area whom immigration agents had tried to pull over. The Department of Homeland Security said that the man was resisting arrest during the stop and that he dragged the officer as he fled in his vehicle.
Department officials have blamed such episodes on “hateful rhetoric,” calling in a statement last week for the “media, leftist groups and sanctuary politicians” to end the “demonization” of immigration enforcement officers.
“We have to turn down the temperature before someone else is killed,” Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary for public affairs, said in the statement. “This violence must end.”
On Wednesday, a detainee was fatally shot when a gunman opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, injuring two others, investigators said. The authorities suggested that the gunman — who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound — was targeting immigration enforcement agents.
