Officials have revealed new details in the investigation into Wednesday’s shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas, which left one detainee dead and two others wounded.
The shooter was identified by federal law enforcement as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn of Fairview, Texas.
The shooting occurred at about 6:40 a.m. local time, according to police. Jahn, who opened fire from the roof of an adjacent building, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
At a press conference on Thursday, Nancy E. Larson, the acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, said officials believe that Jahn “likely” acted alone. Before the attack, the shooter was seen on surveillance video driving with a ladder on his vehicle, Larson said. Authorities believe he used it to access the roof.
In a search of his residence, Larson said that investigators found a collection of notes in which Jahn stated that he intended to inflict “maximum lethality against ICE personnel.” In one note, she said, he expressed hope that the shooting would “give ICE agents real terror.”
“He hoped to minimize collateral damage against detainees and other innocent people,” she said. “It seems that he did not intend to kill detainees or harm them.”
“It’s clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel,” Larson added. “The tragic irony for his evil plot here was that it was a detainee who was killed and two other detainees that were injured.”
The identities of the victims have not been released. No federal law enforcement officers were injured in the shooting. Joseph Rothrock, the FBI special agent in charge in Dallas, said the bureau is treating the shooting as “an act of targeted violence.” FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo to social media showing one of the casings with the phrase “ANTI-ICE” written on it.
President Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other high-ranking members of his administration have blamed the attack on anti-police rhetoric from the left. “If your political rhetoric encourages violence against our law enforcement, you can go straight to hell,” Vance said.
Democratic Rep. Marc Veasey, who represents parts of Dallas in the U.S. House of Representatives, pushed back against those claims in an X post, accusing Republicans of “exploiting” the tragedy to “stoke fear, division, and anger.”
“As we mourn, we must also lower the temperature of our politics,” Veasey wrote.
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