Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas on Wednesday implored his fellow politicians to stop “demonizing” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after a shooting at a Dallas ICE facility left one detainee dead.
“To every politician who is using rhetoric demonizing ICE and demonizing CBP: Stop,” Cruz said during the FBI’s news conference about the shooting. “This has very real consequences.”
“If we want to have a debate about immigration policies, we can do so in the halls of Congress without demonizing each other,” he continued, “and especially without demonizing the men and women who every day put on a badge and risk their lives to keep us safe.”
A gunman opened fire on the ICE facility, per investigators, killing one detainee and seriously injuring two others. No members of law enforcement were hurt in the early-morning attack. An initial police report said the gunman shot “from an adjacent building.”
Multiple news outlets reported the suspected shooter was Joshua Jahn, 29, who was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was a registered independent and last voted in November 2024, according to public records, and appeared to have lived in Oklahoma and Texas before that, per NBC News. He left behind ammunition with the phrase “ANTI-ICE” in blue writing, officials said.
Despite investigators releasing only preliminary information about the shooting, and it not being clear whether the gunman was targeting ICE employees or detainees at the facility, right-wing figures have blamed the shooting on the left. President Donald Trump characterized it as the latest instance of violence caused by “Deranged Radical Leftists. It’s not clear what is the shooter’s political ideology. Between 1990 and 2022, per a 2024 study from the National Institute of Justice, far-right extremists committed more violence and acts of terrorism in the United States than their far-left counterparts.
