Dallas ICE shooting motive isn’t clear, but rise in left-wing violence is | Opinion

This is the point we’ve reached: We can’t even finish processing one case of heinous leftist violence before the next one arrives.

The shooting Wednesday at an ICE facility in Dallas is fresh, and we don’t know much about the killer. R. Joseph Rothrock, the FBI special agent in charge in Dallas, said a message opposing the immigration enforcement agency was written on bullet casings. Those words could be a false flag, especially since it was detainees harmed and not federal agents. Or perhaps the shooter, identified as 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, had a personal beef with one of the victims. Or maybe he was simply a deranged or disconnected individual whose politics don’t provide an easy answer.

But Occam’s razor — the simplest explanation is usually true — suggests this is yet another instance of assault on federal agents, just two weeks after the assassination of young conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

All politically motivated violence is wrong, and assaults motivated by right-wing causes are alarming and far too frequent. In general, we often overattribute the actions of a criminal to the rhetoric of others. But it’s impossible to ignore years of casual statements from the left that the right is chock-full of Nazis. It’s impossible to ignore the string of violence. It’s impossible to ignore the leftist desire to remake the world by any means necessary.

This is the third recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas alone, following a shooting near Alvarado and one in Laredo. The site of Wednesday’s shooting was the target of a bomb threat in August. Elsewhere, agents were assaulted in July at an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon. Violence erupted at an ICE protest in June in Los Angeles. It’s so pervasive that Tesla dealers and individuals’ cars were vandalized because the company’s founder, Elon Musk, dared to work with Trump on modest cuts to our leviathan federal government.

I’m still waiting to hear what exactly those cars did wrong.

Attacks on ICE follow two attempts to assassinate Donald Trump

That was all on the heels of two serious attempts on Donald Trump’s life during the presidential campaign. Consider that those are the ones we know about. How many other credible threats were there? How many come in every day?

Perhaps you’re not comfortable blaming a general atmosphere for the crimes of an individual. Fair enough. But since Trump’s second term began and the federal government started actually enforcing immigration law, progressives have called agents storm troopers, the Gestapo, any scary metaphor they can think of.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, now arguably the most prominent leader of his party and a top candidate for its presidential nomination in 2028, just signed a bill barring law enforcement agents from wearing masks. It covers all levels, but it’s clearly meant for ICE agents daring to make immigration law actually count in California.

Why would they wear masks? Because ordinary agents doing their jobs have been the subject of harassment and threats.

Newsom is hardly alone. Kamala Harris, on a book tour meant to blame everyone but herself for her loss to Trump last year, casually calls Trump a “tyrant” and compares him to a communist dictator.

You can’t tell your followers, again and again and again, that we are on the brink of destruction and not expect some portion of them to take that as a justification for serious action. If Trump is Hitler, that makes killing him a noble act to some. If ICE agents are Nazis harming otherwise innocent people here illegally, it’s downright patriotic to get in their way.

There’s violence and dangerous rhetoric on the right, too

These things happen on the right, too. Two Minnesota Democratic lawmakers were fatally shot in July, and while the specific motivation remains unclear, the suspect is a known anti-abortion activist and Trump supporter. In August, a shooter fired upon Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officers in Atlanta to protest COVID vaccines, an attack that left a law officer dead. Vaccine skepticism, of course, has been elevated at the encouragement of Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Several men were convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who frequently draws conservative bile, including from Trump. More broadly, conservative provocateurs love to raise money and amp up supporters with the stark warning that we’re just one election away from losing the American way of life. Some will learn nothing from this era and resume the same dangerous rhetoric when Democrats eventually return to power.

Liberals predictably trot out statistics showing right-wing violence is more common than that from the left. Those are often individual cases, however, with some carried out by people with horrific opinions but not necessarily driven by those beliefs. The targeting of specific public individuals for disputed acts or espousing conservative beliefs is more common: Justice Brett Kavanaugh. United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Charlie Kirk. And, of course, Trump.

The threat is so acute and imminent, some conservative speakers are wearing bulletproof vests in public appearances.

Because they might get shot over their words.

We grapple frequently with the connection between the broader culture and discourse and the actions of an individual. We’ve long had debates about whether music, video games or films drive violent behavior. It’s too frequently used as a cudgel against one’s opponents.

But leftists’ blaring alarms that the country is descending into dictatorship and exhortations and that nothing matters but stopping Trump and Republicans are, at a minimum, helping to create monsters. And it’s hard to control the monster once it’s unleashed.

This time, it may have led to the death of at least one of the very detainees the shooter probably thought he was protecting. Next time, it could be an ICE agent or local officer, never going home to his or her children again thanks to a shooter who thinks he’s taking out Nazis — because he was told they were everywhere.

This story was originally published September 24, 2025 at 4:18 PM.