An MSNBC guest cited the 2019 shooting at a mosque in New Zealand on Wednesday when analyzing an attack on a United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas.
At least two detainees were killed during a shooting at the ICE office in Dallas on Wednesday, before the gunman took his own life. Christopher O’Leary, Senior Vice President for Global Operations at The Soufan Group, told MSNBC host Ana Cabrera he was concerned about copycat attacks.
“I don’t know if the rooftop trend is going to be a thing. I mean, it could just be coincidental that the best vantage point just happened to be elevated positions in this case. But, you know, people emulating this kind of attack is certainly a concern,” O’Leary said. “The irony with the writing, the first time we really saw that was Brenton Tarrant in the Christchurch shootings — shooting — in a mosque in — in New Zealand, and he was a fierce, you know, white supremacist and — and neo-Nazi and wrote all over his weapon and his rounds very hateful information.”
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“So to see this coming from, you know, potentially the other side of the political spectrum is a little strange, because it is not something — you know, if you are trying to, you know, carry out some kind of message countering, you know, more extreme right-wing stuff, I don’t know why you would, you know, use a tactic that a famous white supremacist who has been revered and copycatted over the years by other white supremacists, why you would do that,” O’Leary continued. “But it does appear that people are moving in that direction because they want people to know what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Again, terrorism is theater.”
In Texas, there were two previous incidents where shots were fired at ICE or Border Patrol facilities since July 4, with ten people being charged with attempted murder in connection with the former incident. In another incident, one person fired at ICE agents with a pistol when the agency raided two California marijuana farms in July after obtaining a warrant.
FBI Director Kash Patel posted an image of some bullets reportedly found near the deceased shooter on X on Wednesday.
Resistance to ICE operations included a Milwaukee judge who allegedly helped an illegal immigrant briefly evade ICE agents in April and Democratic Mayor Freddie O’Connell of Nashville, who released the names of ICE agents involved in a crackdown on illegal immigrants in the city in May.
In New York City, ICE agents arrested Democratic mayoral candidate Brad Lander on June 18 after he allegedly interfered with an ICE operation in a Manhattan court. Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey was charged with assaulting an ICE agent after a May incident at an ICE facility in Newark.
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