There are a couple things that strike me about the shooting at the Dallas Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility yesterday (September 24) that killed at least one of three detainees.[1] First, detainees were shot, not their white supremacist gangster guards.[2] Second, I am increasingly suspicious of these messages—in this case, “anti-ICE,”—found on shell casings,[3] and I’m thinking specifically of one of the favorite accusations right-wing terrorists make when they’re the ones being accused of violence, that this was a “false flag” operation, meant to cast suspicion on them, when in, their suspicions, it was really left-wing provocateurs behind the dastardly deed.
Again, detainees, people who may or may not have been in the U.S. legally, were shot, not their guards. And a message left behind by a suicidal shooter, apparently Joshua Jahn,[4] on a shell casing, is the message they chose to leave behind, not necessarily a reflection of their true beliefs. Yeah, I’m thinking “false flag.”
But it also turns out that the leftist inclinations inferred by Utah governor Spencer Cox[5] and presumably subsequently by prosecutors[6] from shell casings left by Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson are a whole lot more ambiguous than that, informing some observers[7] that, in Michael Senters’ words, Robinson “spent a lot of time on the computer, being terminally online.”[8]
And I am separately informed that even Robinson’s romantic involvement with a roommate who is transitioning from male to female is ambiguous as well: In the Groyper subculture alluded to in some explanations for the Kirk shooting,[9] which apparently includes a number of ‘involuntary celibates’ (‘incels’), “[Nick] Fuentes has a rather infamous video of him saying that heterosexual sex is gay(!).”[10]
Apparently, Fuentes indeed said, “If we’re really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman really makes you more heterosexual, because honestly, dating women is gay, having sex with women is gay. And having sex with men is gay.”[11]
Not that we should attempt to make much sense of an assassin’s motivations anyway, but we are now so deeply into incomprehensibly twisted thinking as to cast considerable doubt on Cox’s visual evidence. And we must accordingly be suspicious of the inscriptions on shell casings allegedly left by Jahn in the Dallas ICE shooting.
It still might be true that these shooters were leftists, but famously, in crime investigations, one looks for motive and opportunity. A violent left-wing radical (these are pretty rare[12]) would have motive to shoot guards not detainees. A violent right-wing radical (these are much more common[13]) would have motive to shoot detainees not guards.
Yet again, detainees were shot in Dallas, not guards.
[1] Washington Post, “Suspect identified in Dallas ICE facility shooting that killed a detainee,” September 24, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/24/dallas-ice-facility-shooting/
[2] Bethany Irvine, “Shooting at Dallas ICE facility kills 2, injures another,” Politico, September 24, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2025/09/24/shooting-at-dallas-ice-facility-kills-2-injures-another-00578736
[3] Kash Patel, “This morning just before 7am local time . . . ,” X, September 24, 2025, https://x.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/1970877754221498599; Washington Post, “Suspect identified in Dallas ICE facility shooting that killed a detainee,” September 24, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/24/dallas-ice-facility-shooting/
[4] Bethany Irvine, “Shooting at Dallas ICE facility kills 2, injures another,” Politico, September 24, 2025, https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook-pm/2025/09/24/shooting-at-dallas-ice-facility-kills-2-injures-another-00578736; Washington Post, “Suspect identified in Dallas ICE facility shooting that killed a detainee,” September 24, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/24/dallas-ice-facility-shooting/
[5] Annabelle Timsit and Jeremy Roebuck, “Kirk shooting suspect had ‘leftist ideology’ but motive unclear, Utah gov. says,” Washington Post, September 14, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/14/charlie-kirk-tyler-robinson-motive/
[6] Mark Berman, Angie Orellana Hernandez, and María Luisa Paúl, “Prosecutors say alleged Charlie Kirk gunman wrote: ‘I had enough of his hatred,’” Washington Post, September 16, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/09/16/kirk-shooting-suspect-tyler-robinson/
[7] Drew Harwell, “The internet culture behind the Kirk shooting suspect’s ‘big meme,’” Washington Post, September 19, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/19/kirk-shooter-meme-culture/
[8] Michael Senters, quoted in Drew Harwell, “The internet culture behind the Kirk shooting suspect’s ‘big meme,’” Washington Post, September 19, 2025, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/09/19/kirk-shooter-meme-culture/
[9] Marc Caputo, “How Charlie Kirk's killing sparked unfounded theories about Groypers,” Axios, September 15, 2025, https://www.axios.com/2025/09/15/groyper-charlie-kirk-nick-fuentes-tyler-robinson
[10] GhostOnTheHalfShell, “@benfell This is where the possible Nick Fuentes tie . . . ,” Mastodon, September 24, 2025, @benfell This is where the possible Nick Fuentes tie
[11] Nick Fuentes, quoted in Dan Tracer, “‘Straightest guy’ Nick Fuentes says ‘having sex with women is gay’ and the Internet just can’t with him,” Queerty, May 13, 2022, https://www.queerty.com/straightest-guy-nick-fuentes-says-sex-women-gay-internet-just-cant-20220513/
[12] Alex Nowrasteh, “Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States, Laissez-Faire, Laissez-Passer w/ Alex Nowrasteh & David Bier, September 11, 2025, https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/politically-motivated-violence-is
[13] Alex Nowrasteh, “Politically Motivated Violence is Rare in the United States, Laissez-Faire, Laissez-Passer w/ Alex Nowrasteh & David Bier, September 11, 2025, https://www.alexnowrasteh.com/p/politically-motivated-violence-is