Second immigrant shot in attack at ICE office in Dallas has died, family says

A second immigrant has died after being shot in an attack at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in Dallas, his family said.

Miguel Ángel García, 32, died early Tuesday after being removed from life support, according to the League of United Latin American Citizens, a civil rights organization supporting the family. He had been in critical condition since a gunman opened fire at ICE’s field office last week in an attack that federal investigators said was intended to target immigration officers.

All of those shot were detainees in a transport van. García - an undocumented immigrant whose wife is expecting their fifth child - was shot several times, his family said. Norlan Guzman Fuentes, 37, of El Salvador was also shot and killed. A third man, from Venezuela, was injured.

“My husband Miguel was a good man, a loving father, and the provider for our family,” García’s wife, Stephany Gauffeny, said in a statement. “His death is a senseless tragedy that has left our family shattered. I do not know how to explain to our children that their father is gone.”

The Trump administration quickly condemned the attack as part of a larger wave of violence against ICE officers and in the days since has announced steps to secure facilities and protect employees. It has released little information on the detainees who were shot and did not immediately respond to requests for comment on García’s death.

The attack has stirred emotions in the immigrant community and beyond in Latin America, where relatives of the victims are grieving.

García’s family had been waiting for his mother to arrive before disconnecting him from life support, according to Juan Proaño, LULAC’s chief executive. The mother had recently been deported to Mexico. Proaño said García’s wife was allowed twice daily visits for two hours while a Department of Homeland Security officer guarded her husband’s hospital bed, and that officers kept soft restraints on his arms and shackled him to the bedframe.

García was brought to the United States as a child from Mexico and grew up in the Dallas area, where he met his wife. Gauffeny said she and her husband had recently bought their first home after years of working to provide for their children.

DHS has not publicly released any details on García and when or why he was detained.

Several immigrant detainees who survived and witnessed the attack are now detained in another part of the state, but ICE is working to deport them quickly, Proaño said. LULAC is working to obtain legal representation for the immigrants. Neither DHS nor ICE responded to Proaño’s assertion that it was quickly trying to deport witness migrants.

Federal investigators said a 29-year-old man was on the rooftop of a nearby building on Sept. 24 when he fired on the Dallas ICE office parking lot where the detainees were being loaded into vans for transport. Authorities identified the shooter as Joshua Jahn, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound as police arrived to his location.

Authorities said the shooter left notes and other evidence indicating he was targeting federal immigration officers in the attack.

María Apolonia Fuentes, the mother of Guzman Fuentes, the Salvadoran migrant killed, said her son was a tree cutter who left his homeland at age 17. ICE said he was detained in late August after the Dallas Police Department arrested and charged him with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. They said he also had an outstanding warrant for driving while intoxicated.

Guzman Fuentes’s mother said the money he sent home helped pay for her food and medications, and she disputed the characterization of her son as a criminal.

“I don’t want condolences,” she said. “I want justice.”