President Donald Trump has warned Democrats that “bad things” will happen to them if right-wing people decide to retaliate amid growing tensions over this week’s deadly shooting at a Texas immigration facility.
While investigations into the shooting are still ongoing, the president has made it clear that he believes the “radical left” is solely responsible for Wednesday’s tragedy, which killed one detainee and wounded two others.
No law enforcement officers were hurt in the incident, but authorities say the shooting was a politically motivated attack targeting ICE agents, who are central to Trump’s deportation strategy.
Asked in the Oval Office on Thursday who was to blame, Trump said he did not doubt that “the radical left is causing this problem”.
He also name-checked people such as Democrat Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who has been critical of ICE’s heavy-handed tactics in rounding up immigrants.
But despite calls to turn down the temperature in America, the president went even further, warning that things were only going to get worse for one side of the political divide.
“Bad things happen when they play these games. I’ll give you a little clue: the right is a lot tougher than the left,” he told reporters.
“They better not get them energized because it won’t be good for the left… It’ll be a point where other people won’t take it anymore… and we don’t want that.”
The comments were viewed by many as a veiled threat, at a time when divisions were already reaching a boiling point following the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
“The President is sick and deranged—openly threatening political violence and thinking it’s all some kind of game,” House Homeland Security Committee Democrats wrote on X. “How can anyone defend this?”
But the administration has doubled down. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, for instance, called the Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization” on Fox News.
Vice President JD Vance described the shooter as a “violent left-wing extremist”. And FBI Director Kash Patel took to social media in the immediate aftermath of the shooting to post a photo of unused shell casings he said had been recovered from the Dallas facility with the words “Anti ICE”.
In his latest social media update posted on Thursday, Patel said the now deceased suspect, Joshua Jahn, wrote a note saying he hoped to give ICE agents “real terror” as he plotted the attack.
The suspect’s devices also had records of him searching for information about ballistics, video of Charlie Kirk being shot and apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents, Patel said.
And, according to the FBI director, Jahn had also downloaded a “Dallas County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management” containing a list of DHS facilities, which showed a high degree of planning.
The shooting took place around 6.40 am at the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office. This facility is typically used to process illegal immigrants after they have been arrested and before they are transported to a long-term detention facility.
According to authorities, Jahn, positioned on an adjacent roof, opened fire “indiscriminately” into the ICE facility and vehicles stationed there.
A group of recently detained individuals was inside one of the vans. Jahn died at the scene with self-inflicted gunshot wounds.
At an update of the investigation on Thursday, Acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Larson read multiple notes the shooter left, which she said included a game plan of the attack.
“He called the ICE employees people showing up to collect a dirty paycheck. He wrote that he intended to maximize lethality against ICE personnel and to maximize property damage at the facility,” she said.
“It’s clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel.”
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