The agency noted there has been an increase in assaults on ICE officials in recent months.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Thursday that the agency will be bolstering security at its field offices and facilities in the wake of a shooting at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas on Wednesday that left one detainee dead and two injured.
“In light of the horrific shooting that was motivated by hatred for ICE and the other unprecedented acts of violence against ICE law enforcement, including bomb threats, cars being used a weapons, rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at officers, and doxing online of officers’ families, DHS will immediately begin increasing security at ICE facilities across the country,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to The Epoch Times.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted a photo on social media showing an unspent shell casing found at the scene of the Dallas shooting with “ANTI-ICE” written on it.
The attack was the latest high-profile targeted killing in the United States, coming two weeks after conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University, and amid heightened immigration enforcement measures across the country.
Authorities have given few details about the shooting on Wednesday and did not publicly release the names of the victims or the gunman. The FBI said it was investigating the shooting as “an act of targeted violence,” while officials said that no law enforcement personnel were hurt or killed in the shooting.
The agency added that ICE officers are facing a more than 1,000 percent increase in assaults this year, suggesting that the media and progressive politicians are partially to blame due to their rhetoric about ICE and immigration enforcement.
“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 men and women of ICE are fathers and mothers, sons and daughters,” McLaughlin said.
“They get up every morning to try and make our communities safer. Like everyone else, we just want to go home to our families at night. The violence and dehumanization of these men and women who are simply enforcing the law must stop.”
