America woke up to another sickening act of politically motivated violence when a sniper opened fire at an ICE field office in Dallas, killing a detainee and wounding others before taking his own life. Law enforcement officers worked under fire to evacuate employees and innocent people, and the scene is a grim reminder that the people who enforce our laws are under siege.
Evidence recovered from the scene makes the motive painfully clear: unfired rounds with the words ANTI‑ICE scrawled on them were found, and the FBI has treated the attack as ideologically driven. This wasn’t some random act of street violence — it was an attempted assassination of law enforcement’s mission, and the coward who did it left behind his manifesto in the form of those bullets.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons called the shooting his “worst nightmare,” and rightly demanded answers and stronger protections for his agents and the public they serve. Lyons’ anger and heartbreak are understandable — he’s seen what happens when rhetoric turns to reality, and he warned that assaults on ICE officers have surged, making this more than an isolated attack.
Enough with the moral equivalence. Elected officials and activists who cheerlead for defunding or demonizing ICE have created a poisonous atmosphere where extremists feel justified to act. Vice President JD Vance and other leaders correctly pointed the finger at the left’s relentless campaign to delegitimize enforcement, and Governor Gavin Newsom’s snide attacks on ICE officials don’t help calm a country already frayed by violence and lawlessness.
The media and many on the political left are already scrambling to spin this into calls for gun control or to minimize the political motive, but facts matter: agents and detainees were targeted at a federal facility. This pattern of attacks on ICE and federal officers is real and growing, and pretending the rhetoric doesn’t produce consequences is either naive or deliberately blind.
What must follow is decisive action — beefed up security at federal facilities, swift federal prosecution of politically motivated attacks, and an end to the poisonous public denigration of those doing dangerous jobs to keep our nation safe. Conservatives can and should stand for law, order, and humane enforcement of immigration laws while insisting on accountability for anyone inciting violence.
Patriots know that we can disagree about policy without cheering on violence or endangering frontline officers. It’s time for common sense and courage: protect our men and women in uniform, call out the rhetoric that fans the flames, and refuse to let political posturing cost another American life. We owe our officers and our communities nothing less.
