Shots fired into San Antonio ICE office in latest attack on the agency

Washington Examiner – by Anna Giaritelli

Police in San Antonio arrested a man early Tuesday morning in connection with gunshots fired through the windows of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in the city, according to the agency.

Local law enforcement responded around 3 a.m. CT Tuesday to shots fired at the ICE field office located north of Interstate 410 near Brookhaven Drive, the FBI confirmed in a statement provided to the Washington Examiner. 

“Shortly before or after, shots were also fired at a nearby building. Both buildings also house businesses completely unrelated to ICE operations. No injuries were reported. The FBI has opened an investigation into the shootings and is currently processing the crime scenes and reviewing surveillance footage,” the FBI continued.

Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio operations, called the shootings “cowardly, brazen, violent acts.”

“An attempt to attack federal employees is a federal crime with serious consequences. The FBI will relentlessly pursue every lead in this case to find the individuals who are responsible,” Combs said in a statement.

Police told News 4 the man is believed to have fired the shots from across the highway into the windows of the building. The building does not have bulletproof windows, and at least one shot penetrated a window.

Here's a photo of one of the bullet holes from this morning. @USCIS stands with @ICE as they work to enforce our laws and keep Americans safe! pic.twitter.com/AUvgpGJco6

— Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli (@HomelandKen) August 13, 2019

“This attack at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Field Office in San Antonio is completely without justification,” ICE Enforcement Removal Operations San Antonio Field Office Director Daniel Bible said in a statement.

Bible went on to blame “politicians, media outlets and activist groups” for “recklessly” sharing information and “misinformation” to the public.

“This disturbing public discourse shrouds our critical law enforcement function and unnecessarily puts our officers’ safety at risk,” said Bible.

“They have a 24/7 command center in there so there were people in the building,” a former senior ICE official who spoke with an official based at the office told the Washington Examiner.

San Antonio police would not confirm the incident or arrest. However, San Antonio Police Department spokesman Officer Douglas Greene said the FBI’s San Antonio office was handling the investigation.

The local FBI office did not respond to a request for comment.

The attack is the latest in a string of incidents targeting ICE facilities nationwide.

Last month, protesters with Never Again blocked the entrances to ICE’s national headquartersin Washington, D.C.

In mid-July, police in Tacoma, Washington, fatally shot an armed man after they said he hurled Molotov cocktails at an ICE building.

On July 12, a group of protesters in Aurora, Colorado, took down an American flag and two other flags from outside an ICE facility and raised a Mexican flag and a defaced “thin blue line” flag, which commemorates law enforcement.

Emily Covington, a spokeswoman for the GEO Group, a private prison company that manages some of the agency’s holding facilities, said its Boca Raton, Florida, headquarters was protested at earlier this week as a result of “misinformation about the services the company provides and by escalating rhetoric from activists.”

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