Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director John Torres told Newsmax on Thursday that the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas is a grim signal of rising threats to federal immigration officers and a dangerous trend that could lead to even more violence.
Appearing on Newsmax's "National Report," Torres said the climate of hostility toward ICE has intensified dramatically.
"The attacks are up over 1,000% and probably higher now," Torres said. "This has just been building up to a crescendo where something like this was bound to happen. Sadly, we've been warning everyone to be very cautious with highly inflammatory language they've been using, mostly to score political points. And here we are. And it's only a matter of time before something worse is even going to happen."
Police say that 29-year-old Joshua Jahn opened fire from a nearby roof onto the ICE facility in Dallas on Wednesday, killing a detainee and critically wounding two others critically before taking his own life. The FBI said Jahn was firing indiscriminately at the building and a van, adding that his intended targets were likely ICE agents.
Torres responded to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who tweeted Wednesday that inflammatory rhetoric aimed at ICE agents has contributed to the violence.
"Well, truer words have never been spoken. She's 100% correct," he said.
The veteran law enforcement official stressed that ICE agents operate under both Democratic and Republican administrations, simply enforcing immigration and criminal laws passed by Congress.
"I worked for many administrations in my career," Torres noted. "There are times where there's very heightened enforcement, and there are other times where we're asked to enforce the law far less frequently. Yet it is the men and women of ICE who are being attacked and bearing the brunt of these types of inflammatory attacks on really what they're doing — they're enforcing the laws that Congress has already passed, which could be changed if people don't like those laws."
Beyond immigration, Torres reminded viewers that ICE agents also enforce more than 400 other criminal statutes, and their primary focus is on removing dangerous criminals from communities.
"They're focused on the worst of the worst," Torres said. "Everyone should want those people out of their community and off the streets to make it safer for them."
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