One person died and two others were injured after a sniper opened fire on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in Dallas last week. The shooter, identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, fired from a rooftop before committing suicide. DHS officials said the attack was “indiscriminate” and that bullet holes covered the building, as reported by CNN. The victims were not ICE officers but detainees awaiting transfer. To their families, this tragedy was not about politics or rhetoric—it was about a loved one who would never return home
Still, the political reaction was swift.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a DHS statement that the attack was “motivated by hatred for ICE” and warned that “for months, we’ve been warning politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric about ICE law enforcement before someone was killed.”
President Donald Trump also weighed in, saying the shooting stemmed from the “radical left Democrats constantly demonizing law enforcement,” according to CNN. Furthermore, Governor Greg Abbott described it as “an attack against our country itself.”
These comments reveal something troubling about how violence is framed in America. Instead of pausing to reflect on how a man gained rooftop access with a rifle in the middle of Dallas, leaders immediately turned to political blame. Rhetoric certainly matters, and comparing ICE officers to “Gestapo”—slave patrols—is dehumanizing. As Noem reminded the public, ICE officers “are fathers and mothers, sons, and daughters” who want nothing more than to return home safely each night. That point is worth remembering. However, focusing on only rhetoric circumvents a deeper problem: why do political grievances so easily turn into armed violence in this country?
This shooting was not an isolated event. Just last month, a man entered the same Dallas ICE office claiming to have a bomb, as reported on Homeland Security. Whether it is a fake bomb threat or a sniper’s rifle, the pattern is clear: ICE facilities have become flashpoints for anger, leaving detainees, officers, and communities vulnerable. Yet, rather than addressing the recurring problem of access to deadly weapons, much of the conversation has been reduced to biased finger-pointing.
Recent ICE attacks have also echoed a national pattern of violence in America, directed largely towards government institutions. Waves of political discontent have prompted attacks on FBI courthouses, offices, and even state legislatures. In each case, individuals have been animated by anger towards a federal agency, thereby turning to violence as a form of expression in their helplessness. According to the National Institute of Justice, domestic extremism has shown that while motivations for armed acts may differ, polarization in the government creates an environment in which grievances erupt into violence.
Gun access remains a central threat tying these incidents together. While politicians spar over rhetoric, few addressed how the 29-year-old was even able to position himself on a rooftop in a major American city with a rifle powerful enough to pierce a supposedly well-fortified federal building. Weeks before the shooting, Dallas Police Chief Eddie Garcia voiced “concerns about the tactics” that led one of his officers to fire at an unarmed man during a chase.
“When we’re right, we’re right,” Garcia told reporters, according to NBC. “When we stumble, we need to hold ourselves accountable.”
The same philosophy should apply here: if a single officer is expected to answer for a split-second decision in the midst of a crisis, shouldn’t institutions and leaders also be held accountable when systemic failures allow a sniper to rain bullets onto a federal facility?
Debates on ICE policies, immigration, and public safety will not disappear. Accordingly, the Dallas shooting only adds another grim chapter to a debate fought too often but not concluded. On one side, critics describe ICE as an agency rooted in cruelty and suppression; on the other, supporters see it as a stabilizer to law and order threats. In addition, lost between these poles are the lives of innocent people, officers, and detainees who walk into these facilities every day. They are the ones left exposed when the nation’s political lines are crossed with bullets, and they are the ones who suffer as politicians climb podiums to deliver promises that rarely reach the ground.
