AUSTIN — The Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement office that came under gunfire Wednesday morning will not have migrant check-ins until Monday as a result of the shooting that left two dead, an agency spokesperson said.
The shooting Wednesday morning left one detainee dead and two in critical condition. The shooter died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said. Joseph Rothrock, the FBI agent in charge of the Dallas field office, said the gunfire is being investigated as “an act of targeted violence.”
Individuals who had been scheduled to show up to the Dallas office Thursday, Friday or Saturday as part of a previously scheduled check-in will now have to report Monday.
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Check-ins are a regular part of ICE operations and migrants show up to the Dallas ICE office to check in and make sure they are complying with terms of their release. The check-ins are used to keep track of migrants in and around North Texas.
Edwin Cardona from Venezuela, one of the witnesses to Wednesday’s shooting, was inside the Dallas ICE office for a check-in when the shooting started. Cardona was not injured.
Asma Din, a Dallas immigration attorney, has a client who has a check-in scheduled for Friday at 7 a.m. but has yet to receive information from the agency on what she or her client should do.
Din hopes there will be increased security measures at the office or that migrants can check in with the agency with different methods.
“Our concern is everybody’s safety,” Din said. “There needs to be a backup plan.”
Wednesday’s shooting, which authorities have called an attack on ICE agents, did not injure an ICE officer. The gunman wrote “ANTI-ICE” on an unspent shell casing, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media Wednesday.
It is the second shooting at a North Texas ICE facility in the past couple of months. In July, an attack at the Prairieland Detention Center, about 35 miles south of Dallas, injured one Alvarado Police officer after he was shot in the neck. The officer survived and no ICE agents or migrants were injured.
Authorities arrested at least a dozen people.
Six women were arraigned in federal court Monday in connection to the attack. The arraignments at the U.S. District Court in Fort Worth were the first among more than a dozen people whom federal authorities described as having planned an “ambush with the attempt to kill ICE correction officers.”