A deadly shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas that left one migrant dead and two in critical condition Wednesday morning comes after months of increasingly volatile rhetoric against the government agency — largely perpetrated by vitriol-spewing lefties, including many in high positions of power.
The gunman, 29-year-old Joshua Jahn, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on a rooftop near the immigration processing facility.
“This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“I AM CALLING ON ALL DEMOCRATS TO STOP THIS RHETORIC AGAINST ICE AND AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT, RIGHT NOW!”
In July, the White House urged Dems to “tone down” their critiques of ICE, but many didn’t listen.
Gov. Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has shamelessly condemned ICE — and even encouraged protests against agents, including the disastrous riots that wreaked havoc in Los Angeles in early June.
Under his leadership, left-leaning non-profits provided riot gear packages to protesters, complete with facemasks, goggles, and an open line for “jail support.”
On Tuesday night, mere hours before the shooting in Dallas, Newsom appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” and slammed ICE as a “private domestic army” being used to bolster the Trump admin’s “authoritarian tendencies.”
“People ask, ‘Well, is authoritarianism you being hyperbolic?’ Bulls–t we’re being hyperbolic. If you’re a black or brown community, it’s here in this country… These are not just authoritarian tendencies; these are authoritarian actions by an authoritarian government,” he said.
“That’s happening in the United States of America: Masked men jumping out of unmarked cars, people disappearing, no due process, no oversight, zero accountability. This can’t be normalized. None of this can be normalized.”
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, who was arrested in May during a protest at an ICE facility in the New Jersey city, compared the agency to slave catchers.
“People are talking about how difficult it is to live in New Jersey. Well, it’s been difficult for us for a long time,” the Democrat said the month before his arrest in a video exclusive obtained by The Post, adding that “black folks” have “come from a whole lot of undocumented people.”
“And if they knew you didn’t have your papers, you going back to the plantation. They have people chasing, catching you. It wasn’t called ICE then.”
“The Squad”
A quad of young Democrats in the US House of Representatives, informally dubbed “The Squad,” have frequently condemned ICE raids that often target their own communities and constituents.
The most vocal of them is New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was recently reported to be eyeing a presidential run in 2028.
In February, AOC and many other representatives shared a “Know Your Rights” guide to help would-be deportees ward off ICE agents knocking at their doors.
In May, the Bronx native came under fire for defying border czar Tom Homan and dared him to drag her to court after facing months of accusations that her support of migrants was blocking deportations.
“Tom Homan said he was going to refer me to the DOJ because I’m using my free speech rights in order to advise people of their constitutional protections. To that I say: Come for me. Do I look like I care?” she said.
On Tuesday, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar called for ICE to be abolished in a since-deleted post on social media as she flamed the agency for allegedly using a 5-year-old as bait to nab their migrant father.
“This is vile and beyond cruel. Abolish ICE,” Omar wrote.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren & Ed Markey
In June, Democratic Massachusetts Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey led a state-wide congressional petition aiming to sound an alarm about ICE’s “escalating aggression.”
“ICE’s conduct has gone beyond simply enforcing the law against people convicted of violent crimes and has subjected community members who pose no threat, including parents and children, to seemingly needless harm. ICE’s escalating aggression is not making us safer,” the pair wrote in a seven-page letter distributed to state officials across the country.
“The human toll of these tactics is immense. Families are being separated, and citizen and noncitizen community members alike are left living in fear.”
They “collateral” damage caused by some tactics used by agents, including weaponry like stun grenades and rubber bullets on top of raids that appear to be “kidnappings.”
Joy Reid
Former MSNBC host Joy Reid, whose show was axed in late February, dismissed ICE raids as “performative.”
Before going off the air, she also compared deportation efforts to how Jewish people were rounded up in Nazi Germany – on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“He [Hitler] and his minister of public enlightenment and propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, launched a massive propaganda campaign that labeled Jews as carriers of deadly diseases and violent terrorists, defeating the Jews of Europe, who they viewed as subhuman, was a question of good, conquering evil, which conditioned millions of Germans to celebrate Hitler and turn a blind eye to his brutality. If that sounds vaguely familiar, that’s because it is, similarities to what happened in Germany, and what’s happening now in America are just undeniable,” she said.
In June, she published an op-ed, which she was paid to write, on the LA riots, placing full blame on ICE.
“Four days in Los Angeles and all I saw was SOCAL normality … until ICE showed up,” she wrote.
She also scorned the media for “selling a lie” about the chaos at the riots and “helping” the Trump admin’s agenda.
Joe Scarborough
The famed MSNBC anchor and former member of the US House of Representatives, who frequently criticizes the Trump admin, flamed ICE’s tactics as being distinctly un-American and “ham-fisted attempts to intimidate.”
“Of course, Border Patrol has every right to do its job; Americans want it to do its job. But that job is to keep our borders safe, not show up at rallies for the president’s opposition,” he said.
He also delved into his perspective on Republicans’ waning favorability in the polls.
“The reason is not the administration’s underlying policies; it’s the implementation of those policies and ham-fisted attempts to intimidate, like what we saw in Los Angeles on Thursday and what we’ve seen play out across the country: agents running around with masks, sunglasses, no identification on them whatsoever, violently arresting people in the streets. It’s not American. It’s not a sight that Americans want to see.”
Legislation against ICE
Over the summer, many Dem-led states started proposing and even ratifying laws prohibiting ICE from wearing masks concealing their identities during public raids. The laws still allow agents to wear protective gear, but require that they supplement the coverings with identifiers to make it clear who they’re with, including nametags pasted on their helmets.
On Monday, California became the first state to sign one of the bills into law. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blasted the move and said that agents would not be complying with the law.
New York Democratic State Sen. Patricia Fahy introduced a similar bill in July, which Gov. Kathy Hochul has not signed into law.
“When agents of the federal government are operating like masked militias, we’ve crossed a dangerous line by turning immigration enforcement into a paramilitary secret police force that should shock the nation’s collective conscience,” Fahy said.
“This goes beyond immigration enforcement; it’s intimidation and it echoes authoritarian regimes, not the United States of America.”
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