“Ironically, in his evil plot, a detainee was tragically killed, and two other detainees were injured during the attack,” remarked Nancy Larson, Acting US Attorney for the Northern District of Texas.

Following the shooting, FBI agents searched the suspect’s home, uncovering a trove of handwritten notes detailing a “strategy for the attack and target areas at the facility,” according to Larson.

The shooting is being investigated as “an act of targeted violence,” FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge Joe Rothrock stated at a news conference on Wednesday.

President Donald Trump and other Republicans have blamed the political left for violence, referencing the photo Patel shared.

“This violence results from Radical Left Democrats continually vilifying Law Enforcement, calling for ICE’s dismantlement, and likening ICE Officers to ‘Nazis’,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Vice President JD Vance also claimed – without evidence – that the attack was politically motivated.

“There’s some evidence that we have that’s not yet public, but we know this person was politically motivated,” Vance said.

The trio shot while detained at the Dallas field office were about to be transferred to a longer-term facility, ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan disclosed to Fox News.

Authorities have not named the victims. They were in the country illegally, Sheahan said.

The ministry said the head of its North American Unit expressed concern for the wounded Mexican national and requested clarification of the shooting’s events and unrestricted access to the person, the statement reads.

What is the suspect’s background?

Jahn had lived in a Dallas suburb and was charged a decade ago with delivering marijuana, according to court records.

In 2016, when he was 19, Jahn was charged with delivering more than one-fourth of an ounce of marijuana, according to Collin County court records. He pleaded guilty and the case against him was deferred, with Jahn being placed on probation.

The charge is classified in Texas law as a “state jail felony,” the least severe type of felony in the state.

“He’s a young kid, a thousand miles from home, didn’t really seem to have any direction, living out of his car at such a young age,” Sanderson told the AP.

A Joshua Jahn studied at Collin College in the Dallas suburb of McKinney “at various times” between 2013 and 2018, a school spokesperson told the AP via email.

Jahn voted in the Democratic primary in March 2020 and hasn’t voted since then in Collin County, according to records provided to CNN by the county Elections Department. Voters in Texas don’t declare a political party when registering to vote but choose a party’s ballot when voting in primaries.

What do we know about the scene?

On any given day, people detained by ICE are processed at the agency’s field office in Dallas – a rectangular, brick building tucked between a busy highway, several law offices and a luxury apartment complex.

On Wednesday morning, gunshots slicing through the air from above sent visitors running for cover or peering out of their cars to investigate – some worried for family members inside the facility.

Investigators spent much of Wednesday scouring the scene of the shooting for evidence, video shows.

Several law enforcement officers were seen standing on the roof of a building neighbouring the Dallas field office, aerial video captured by CNN affiliate KTVT on Wednesday shows. The video later pans to show an aerial view of the ICE facility.

A CNN team later recorded video of authorities searching a Toyota at an office building near the field office. The team witnessed a heavy law enforcement presence at the building as authorities searched the car with Texas plates.

One side of the car displayed a map of the US with the wording “Radioactive fallout from nuclear detonations have passed over these areas more than 2x since 1951.”

The car was cleared by a local bomb squad and other investigators before they started their search, according to a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation.

It is not immediately clear what connection the vehicle has to the shooting investigation.

Who is detained at the facility?

Detainees are typically held at the field office for a short time during processing before they are transferred to a detention centre, according to a former senior ICE official. The building contains three or four holding cells, the official said.

On average, detainees stayed about 14 hours in the Dallas office, according to the data, which runs through late July.

ICE has kept detainees for days or longer in some hold rooms around the country, CNN reported earlier this month.

A longstanding ICE policy restricted the agency from keeping detainees in hold rooms for more than 12 hours, but the agency amended that in June to allow stays of up to 72 hours in hold room facilities like the Dallas field office.

People who were detained at the facility have been moved to a different Texas detention centre to complete processing, according to George Rodriguez, an immigration attorney and ICE liaison for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said agencies will continue to “arrest, detain, and deport any individuals in this country illegally – without interruption.”