A Democratic congressman from Dallas said he doubted that the FBI would lead a thorough and objective investigation into a shooting that left two people dead near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in his district.
“I don’t trust anything that’s happening out of that agency at all,” Rep. Marc Veasey said. “I don’t trust them at all. They’re overly political.”
Officials were slow to answer many questions about the four people shot on Wednesday morning in Dallas, and Veasey, who represents the area where the shooting took place, says political “gamesmanship” was already spiraling out of control before anyone had real answers.
At a law enforcement news conference on Wednesday morning, officials declined to provide details about those dead or injured, beyond clarifying they weren’t law enforcement personnel.
“That was all they said. And I was really, I was sickened by that, and I was disappointed by that,” Veasey said in a phone interview immediately following the news conference. “If there are two victims that are migrants, they need to be acknowledged.”
Multiple publications reported that law enforcement sources told them those hit by gunfire are immigrants, which the Department of Homeland Security confirmed in an afternoon news release. Three people died, including the gunman who shot himself, and a detainee is in critical condition, according to DHS.
But reports that those shot were immigrants were already circulating hours earlier; sources told WFAA, a Dallas TV station, that the shooting took place near a bus where ICE officials were loading or unloading detainees.
Federal officials at the Dallas news conference did spend significant time condemning anti-ICE political rhetoric. The special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas Field Office, Joseph Rothrock, said that “messages that are anti-ICE in nature” were found “near the suspected shooter.”
Veasey said he was baffled, and that tuning in to the livestreamed conference on Wednesday morning left him with more questions than answers.
“Why is there a need, and an emphasis so important, on keeping this about people from the far-left shooting at law enforcement, and not acknowledging that these were two people — it doesn’t matter if they were migrants or detainees, these were two people that had families?” Veasey said.
The FBI declined to comment.
The DHS news release Wednesday afternoon stated that three detainees were shot, and that “the gunman was found with a self-inflicted gun wound.” Two immigrants are dead, and one is in critical condition, according to DHS.
“The shooter fired indiscriminately at the ICE building, including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot,” DHS wrote. “The shell casings were found with anti-ICE messages on them. This was an attack on ICE law enforcement.”
“Our prayers are with the families of those killed and our ICE law enforcement. This vile attack was motivated by hatred for ICE,” Secretary Kristi Noem wrote in the release. “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.”
But later Wednesday afternoon, the AP reported that DHS revised the number of people who died, from three to two.
“DHS is once again releasing information before having all the facts. Kristi Noem continues to be incompetent,” Veasey said in a text to NOTUS about the revision.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted an image of a message left on shell casings that Rothrock was ostensibly referring to, and offered a typo-riddled statement.
“While the investigation is ongoing, an initial review of the evidence shows an idealogical motive behind this attack,” Patel wrote. “It has to end and the FBI and our partners will lead these investigative efforts to see to it that those who target our law enforcement are pursued and brought to the fullest extent of justice.”
Patel, like officials at the news conference, didn’t share details about the victims beyond stating that “thankfully, no law enforcement personnel were injured.”
Veasey decried Patel’s response.
“Until we get a full briefing on exactly what happened, and there are documents that are released that third parties can actually look through, and try to piece together the facts, I think that that’s all we have, because we know that Patel is gonna — he’s gonna play Patel games,” Veasey said.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who spoke at the news conference, chastised public officials for what he deemed dangerous rhetoric about immigration enforcement personnel.
“To every politician demanding that ICE agents be doxed, and calling for people to go after their families, stop. This has very real consequences,” Cruz told reporters. “Your political opponents are not Nazis. We need to learn how to work together without demonizing each other.”
Veasey offered a counterpoint to Cruz’s statements: Smears about Democrats following violent tragedies aren’t any more helpful.
“It would have been a great time for him to also say calling people Nazis, or calling people Marxists too — like, 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,” Veasey said.
Veasey said he tried to lead by example with his initial response to the shooting, which he said “was just a very basic, general, very nonpartisan, as vanilla as-it-gets statement.”
He said he wished his Republican colleagues in Congress would wait before immediately taking to social media to blame their opponents for tragedies.
“As the morning progressed, I found out that it was detainees that were probably the victims in this, and now my comments have evolved from what I said this morning,” Veasey said. “That’s a good place for everybody to start instead of one-uppism. Like, this is crazy that this is some kind of jockeying and pole positioning that’s taking place to see what side is actually the craziest.
“That is pure insanity,” Veasey added. “This is not some sort of a sporting contest. This is about public safety. This is about whether or not people are going to be held accountable for violence.”
Veasey was also referring to the quick judgments some of his Republicans made about the shooter’s motives on X, as well as statements from administration officials such as Vice President JD Vance, who tied the shooting to “the obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE.”
“The radical Left’s war on our brave men & women in uniform MUST END. Violence against ICE agents is out of control. This targeting has to stop,” Rep. John Rose of Tennessee posted.
Other Republicans offered condemnations of violence against ICE officers in the wake of the shooting — many issued before law enforcement posted any information about the shooter or the victims.
“The Radical Left must STOP the demonization of our law enforcement, specifically ICE and Border Patrol,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama posted.
Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, meanwhile, took to X to condemn the administration’s initial response.
“Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence,” Lee wrote. “We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”
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This article has been updated to note the FBI declined to comment and that DHS officials revised the number of people who died down to two.