A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas on Wednesday morning, has predictably been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.
While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and no federal agents had been injured, the president and his allies were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.
DHS previously said that two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying that the shooting killed only one detainee. It adds that two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.
Related: Texas Ice facility shooting: what we know so far about deadly attack
Official statements have notably lacked much focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference on Wednesday morning officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Meanwhile, figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.
Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis”, he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.
DHS secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”
The FBI has said that authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials say the investigation is ongoing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.
The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS has also said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.
Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, went as far as branding the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”
Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the recent killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” he raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said. He later acknowledged that the motive of the shooter is not known for a fact after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees.
The attack comes amid fears that the Trump administration plans to mount a brutal crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting anyone from visa-holders in the US to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.
As with Kirk’s death, Trump’s allies stand accused of using the Dallas incident to score “political points” against the left as it comes down hard against free speech that is at odds with the administration.
Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told Notus that political “gamesmanship” was already spiraling out of control before anyone had real answers, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.
He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”. “We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”
Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who now leads gun violence prevention group, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.
Representative Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”
Fellow Pennsylvania representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas ICE shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not ICE agents.”