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What is the ICE tracking app? Inside Joshua Jahn's Dallas shooting plan - research, a note and more
Joshua Jahn, the gunman who opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday.
Joshua Jahn, the gunman who opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Wednesday. FBI Director Kash Patel revealed that the 29-year-old had ‘pre-planned’ the attack and had been tracking ICE agents via an application. Without getting into specifics, he added that Jahn also searched for ‘Charlie Kirk shot video' a couple of days before the shooting.
The suspect fatally shot one ICE detainee and wounded two others, officials confirmed. US attorney for the North District of Texas, Nancy Larson, told reporters that a collection of notes found at Jahn's residence laid out his motivations.
Read More: Joshua Jahn left a handwritten manifesto before Dallas shooting with 'real terror' warning
"It's clear from these notes that he was targeting ICE agents and ICE personnel," Larson said. “He hoped his actions would terrorize ICE employees and interfere with their work, which he called human trafficking. The tragic irony for his evil plot here is that it was a detainee who was killed and two other detainees that were injured.”
"The perp downloaded a document titled "Dallas County Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Management" containing a list of DHS facilities. He conducted multiple searches of ballistics and the "Charlie Kirk Shot Video" between 9/23-9/24. Between 8/19-8/24, he searched apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents," Patel wrote on X, platform formerly known as Twitter.
"One of the handwritten notes recovered read, "Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think, 'is there a sniper with AP rounds on that roof?" Further accumulated evidence to this point indicates a high degree of pre-attack planning," the FBI chief added.
What is the ICE tracking app?
While the specific application was not mentioned, these kinds of platforms made headlines soon after immigration raids in Los Angeles and other cities. One such app, ICEBlock, was launched in April and was called out by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and ICE acting Director Todd M Lyons.
Both raised concerns over agent safety.
Joshua Aaron, ICEBlock’s developer, said that the criticism is ‘another right-wing fearmongering scare tactic’. He told NBC News that the app was designed to be a resource for immigrants.
“When I saw what was happening in this country, I really just wanted to do something to help fight back. I grew up in a Jewish household, and being part of the Jewish community, I had the chance to meet Holocaust survivors and learn the history of what happened in Nazi Germany, and the parallels that we can draw between what’s happening right now in our country and Hitler’s rise to power are undeniable," he said back then.
