At least one victim is dead after three people were shot outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Dallas Wednesday. The shooter is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the agency's director said.
Dallas police said a person opened fire from an adjacent building. Two victims were taken to a nearby hospital with gunshot wounds and another died at the scene, DPD said.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons confirmed the shooting during an interview on CNN on Wednesday.
"It could be employees, it could be civilians that were visiting the facility, it could be detainees," Lyons said of those who were shot. "At this point, we're still working through that."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said details were still emerging, but the agency was confirming there were "multiple injuries and fatalities." Noem said the motive remained unclear but noted there has been an uptick of targeting of ICE agents.
Dozens of emergency vehicles were seen along a highway near the facility Wednesday morning.
ICE and Homeland Security didn't immediately provide additional details.
On X, J.D. Vance called the shooting an "attack on law enforcement," although it's not clear if any ICE agents were shot. Gov. Greg Abbott also voiced his support for law enforcement on X, saying Texas fully supports ICE. "This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention and deportation of illegal immigrants," Abbott said.
The facility is ICE's main field office in Dallas and serves a much wider geographic area than Dallas, including Oklahoma.
The field office that sees people with ongoing immigration cases who check in with ICE officers, as well as detainees who are processed and placed at different detention facilities, according to Belinda Arroyo, a Dallas immigration attorney whose firm is only a few minutes away from the building.
Arroyo said she had to send most of her staff home this morning as they couldn't get into their office.
"I mean, I have clients that come in all the way from East Texas to check in with ICE office," Arroyo said. "So, it's not even just officers, you also have, you know, people who are in active removal proceedings who are there on a daily basis. So, I'm sure there were probably a lot of other people there as well."
At the height of the Biden administration, Arroyo estimates hundreds of people visited the facility daily. With fewer people coming in at the border under the Trump administration, she said, that number is probably closer to 100 a day.
Arroyo doesn't exactly know how the shooting will affect the facility and her clients, she said. But she expects to see increased security, something she said has been lacking in the years she's worked in and around the building.
"Every type of person goes to that facility," Arroyo said. "And so, any type of person could have been hurt. So, you know, all this hate towards anybody is really hurting everybody."
Eric Folkerth is the lead pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church, which hosts weekly prayer vigils on the sidewalk outside the Dallas ICE facility. No congregants were there Wednesday morning.
In a Facebook post, Folkerth asked for prayers for everyone involved, especially first responders.
"I will say this: Every week in my prayers, I pray sincere prayers for ICE agents and staff, alongside our fervent prayers for immigrant neighbors," Folkerth wrote. "I do this precisely because, as a follower of Jesus, I am convinced that violence...either perpetrating it, or being a victim of it...is not a solution to our problems."
The shooting comes after a ramping up of political violence in the country. Charlie Kirk, a conservative political activist, was fatally shot in Utah. And a July 4 attack at a Texas immigration detention center injured a police officer. Attackers dressed in black military-style clothing opened fire outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, southwest of Dallas, federal prosecutors said. At least 17 people have been charged in connection with the attack.
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