(DALLAS, Texas) — As the motive in the fatal sniper-type shooting at a Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office this week becomes clear, law enforcement experts said the incident is part of a frightening trend of rifle-wielding shooters targeting politicians, police and others from long distances.
The Dallas shooter, according to authorities wanted to “terrorize” ICE officers not just in Dallas, but around the country. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas made clear on Thursday that the shooter “hoped to minimize any collateral damage or injury to the detainees and any other innocent people. It seems that he did not intend to kill the detainees or harm them. It’s clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ice personnel.” Authorities say the suspect’s writings showed he had an anti-ICE bias.
Since an alleged would-be assassin attempted to kill President Donald Trump during a July 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, at least seven sniper-type incidents have unfolded across the country, including the Sept. 10 shooting that claimed the life of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, according to reporting by ABC News.
While such shootings have been part of America’s history, including the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, law enforcement experts told ABC News that they have never seen so many sniper-type incidents occurring in such a short amount of time.
“I believe this is the next chapter, if you will, in our history of violence, specifically active-shooter-type situations,” Jesse Hambrick, a retired Georgia deputy sheriff and counter-sniper expert, told ABC News.
The latest incident occurred on Wednesday morning when the 29-year-old suspect, identified by federal authorities as Joshua Jahn of Fairview, Texas, opened fire on a Dallas ICE facility, killing a detainee and leaving two others critically wounded, officials said. The victims were shot in an uncovered sallyport at the facility, officials said.
Jahn allegedly planned the attack for months and opened fire from the rooftop of a private office building overlooking the ICE facility, using an 8mm bolt-action rifle he legally purchased in August, Joe Rothrock, the FBI special agent in charge of the bureau’s Dallas office, said at Thursday afternoon’s news conference.
Rothrock described the shooting as a “targeted, ambush-style attack” and that the suspect engaged in a significant, high-degree of pre-attack planning, including researching the targeted building and using apps to track the location of ICE agents.
Federal officials said the suspect, a U.S. citizen who died by suicide, sprayed the length of the building with gunfire and left behind writings leading investigators to believe he wanted to shoot ICE agents, not detainees, and cause terror, federal officials said.
“Hopefully this will give ICE agents a real terror, to think, ‘is there a sniper with AP [armor-piercing] rounds on the roof?” the suspect allegedly wrote in one handwritten note, according to FBI Director Kash Patel.
Patel disclosed in a social media post on Thursday that the suspect also conducted multiple searches on ballistics and the ‘Charlie Kirk Shot Video’ before carrying out the attack.
Like the suspect in the Kirk shooting who engraved shell casings found at the scene with messages — including “Hey fascist! CATCH! — authorities said the suspect in the shooting at the Dallas ICE facility also wrote a message on at least one bullet casing found at the crime scene that read, “ANTI-ICE.”
Like some of the other sniper shooters who have carried out recent attacks, the suspect seemed prepared to die, Hambrick told ABC News.
“Here’s the reality, very honestly, if someone has no fear of losing their own life, it makes them dang near impossible to prevent from taking somebody else’s life,” Hambrick said.
The shooting at the ICE facility came just two weeks after a gunman perched atop a building at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah, shot and killed Kirk as the 31-year-old co-founder of the conservative grass roots organization Turning Point USA was speaking to a large crowd at an outdoor event. The suspect, identified as 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, was arrested and charged with capital murder.
“The long-range threat is new, and I think that’s all stemming from Butler,” said Don Mihalek, a former senior U.S. Secret Service Agent, referring to the July 2024 attack on Trump, which killed one rallygoer and injured two others before the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crook, was fatally shot by a Secret Service counter sniper. “I think the Butler incident is being copycatted in many ways by other people.”
Less than a month after the assassination attempt on Trump, a sniper armed with an AR-15 rifle opened fire from an overpass along Kentucky’s Interstate 75 near London, hitting a dozen vehicles and injuring eight people, authorities said. The suspect, 32-year-old Joseph Couch, a former member of the Army Reserve, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound following an 11-day manhunt, officials said.
On Sept. 15, 2024, just two months after the first attempt on Trump’s life, a Secret Service agent foiled another assassination attempt on the president at Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. The agent spotted the barrel of a rifle sticking out of the fence line and opened fire on the shooter, identified as 59-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, causing him to flee the area. Roth was convicted by a jury on Tuesday and faces a sentence of life in prison.
Several of the recent sniper attacks have targeted firefighters and law enforcement officers. On June 29, 2025, a 20-year-old suspect, identified as Wess Roley, allegedly ambushed and killed two firefighters in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, after he set a fire they responded to, officials said. Roley was later found dead from suicide, authorities said.
On Aug. 7, a gunman identified by authorities as 61-year-old Carmine Faino shot and wounded two Pennsylvania state troopers in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania, with a rifle he allegedly fired “from a position of tactical superiority” after calling 911 to report shots fired near a home he shared with a girlfriend he allegedly killed, officials said. Faino was fatally shot by a special emergency response team, officials said.
Three days after the Pennsylvania attack, a sniper opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campus in Atlanta, authorities said. The suspect, 30-year-old Patrick White, who officials said blamed the COVID-19 vaccine for making him sick and depressed, died by suicide.
Mihalek said such sniper shootings present a “tremendous challenge” for law enforcement to prevent, particularly at a time when ambush attacks on law enforcement are dramatically increasing.
In a report released on Sept. 2, the National Fraternal Order of Police stated that 229 officers have been shot in the line of duty thus far in 2025, 31 fatally. In 2024, 342 officers were shot in the line of duty, including 50 who were killed, up from 46 in 2023, according to the report.
There have been at least 50 ambush-style attacks on law enforcement this year, resulting in 66 officers being shot, 15 of them fatally, according to the report. In all of 2024, there were 61 ambush-style attacks on law enforcement officers nationwide, resulting in 79 officers shot, 18 fatally, according to the National Fraternal Order of Police.
Amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the country, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement this week that ICE officers are facing a 1,000% increase in assaults against them since January.
In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said security protocols are being ramped up at ICE facilities across the country.
“Obviously, the next step for us is making sure our officers are safe. That’s my biggest fear every night, especially with these increases [in assaults], that everyone gets home safe every night. We’ve got to make sure our buildings and facilities are protected,” said Lyons.
Hambrick told ABC News that in the current threat environment, law enforcement agencies nationwide should be reevaluating their security tactics, including working with property owners in their communities to prevent easy access to rooftops.
“Law enforcement has to think now, ‘When I walk into a setting where I’m going to be, I’ve got to look up, and that’s not natural,” Hambrick said. “I’ve got to look around 360 degrees, and I need to secure those roofs.”
Mihalek said he believes the use of drones to scan the tops of buildings could become routine and help law enforcement agencies protect officers.
“Drones may become standard procedure in a lot of these law enforcement operations, especially for ICE,” Mihalek said.
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