Antifa gunmen lured ICE agents into an ambush with fireworks at a Texas detention center last Fourth of July, then opened fire with rifles.
Today an ICE agent shot a man in Austin, and the city's Democrats blamed the officer instantly.
What Mayor Kirk Watson left out is what DHS sources say about the man ICE shot.
The Man ICE Shot Had Already Been Ordered Out of the Country
Sources inside DHS told Fox News the man was a Venezuelan national living here illegally, with a final removal order already on the books.
That means an immigration judge had already reviewed his case months or years ago and ordered him deported.
He wasn't a random pickup off the street.
He'd already exhausted his legal options.
And yet Austin Mayor Kirk Watson went before cameras and said he was "extremely unhappy" – not about a man who defied a court order and stayed in the country anyway, but about the federal agents who showed up to enforce it.
Watson went further, accusing ICE of spreading fear through his city.
Let that land for a second.
The people creating fear are the ones enforcing a judge's order – not the man who ignored it for as long as he could.
Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and spent four years as a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, went further still.
Casar called the shooting a "horror" and told reporters "for Austin to be safe, ICE should end its surge here."
He also suggested, without offering evidence, that ICE has a habit of shooting people and then lying about it afterward.
That's the Chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus calling federal law enforcement officers liars on the day of the shooting – before a single fact had been established.
Democrats Have Been Heating Up This Fuse for Over a Year
This is not the first time Democrat politicians in Texas have raced to attack ICE the moment anything happens.
It's a pattern, and DHS has the numbers to prove it.
DHS reported that assaults on ICE officers rose more than 1,300% in 2025 compared with the year before, alongside a 3,200% jump in vehicle-ramming attacks and a spike in death threats against agents.
As DHS put it bluntly last November: "Our law enforcement officers have had Molotov cocktails and rocks thrown at them, been shot at."
That same July 4th ambush mentioned above wasn't random, either.
A cell of roughly ten Antifa members used fireworks to draw ICE agents out of the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, then opened fire, wounding a local police officer.
Investigators found literature at the scene reading "FIGHT ICE TERROR WITH CLASS WAR."
Ten people now face attempted-murder charges.
Three days later, another gunman attacked a Border Patrol facility in McAllen.
What were Democrat politicians saying in the weeks before those attacks?
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the caucus chair Casar succeeded, had called ICE "a terrorist force" just weeks earlier.
Most House Democrats then voted against a resolution condemning anti-ICE violence.
Watson in Austin today is running the same play: cast ICE as the threat, demand an investigation, let the crowd do the rest.
ICE Was Doing Exactly What Federal Law Requires
Under federal law, once a judge issues a final order of removal, ICE doesn't have discretion to look the other way.
That's not a talking point. That's the statute Watson and Casar both swore an oath to uphold.
Police say a brief foot pursuit preceded the shooting – the man ran, and the officer went after him.
What exactly did Watson and Casar expect to happen instead?
The facts are simple: a man with a standing deportation order ran from the agent sent to enforce it, and was shot once in the torso.
He was released from the hospital into federal custody that evening, according to his own attorney.
The left's narrative – that this was random brutality against an innocent bystander – falls apart the moment you ask why ICE was there in the first place.
Because a federal judge had already ordered him removed, and he never left.
Watson knows this. Casar knows this. They don't care, because the goal was never accuracy.
The goal is what it always is: make ICE the villain, make the crowd angrier, and outrun the story before anyone has to answer for it.
Rep. Chip Roy, who represents part of Texas, framed it more bluntly on social media: illegal immigration itself, he argued, is the real war being waged on Americans.
He's not wrong.
While Watson holds press conferences demanding answers from ICE, his city has an angry crowd in the street confronting the federal officers who came to do their jobs.
That crowd didn't show up on its own.
It was built by politicians who have spent more than a year telling their base that ICE agents are the enemy – and DHS has documented exactly what that rhetoric produces: ambushes, vehicle attacks, and a surge in death threats against the officers still showing up for work.
Today in Austin, it produced a mob outside a shooting scene, while the man ICE came to deport sits in federal custody instead.
The pattern isn't hard to see.
The only question is whether Democrats like Watson and Casar will ever own it, or whether they'll keep lighting matches and blaming the fire.
Sources:
- Stepheny Price and Brooke Taylor, "ICE Shooting Rocks Austin as Democrat Demands Bodycam Video, Independent Probe," Fox News, September 20, 2026.
- "Democrats Want a Return to the Worst of 1960s Radicalism and Violence," Fox News, July 2025.
- "Radical Rhetoric by Sanctuary Politicians Leads to an Unprecedented 1,300% Increase in Assaults Against ICE Officers and a 3,200% Increase in Vehicular Attacks," Department of Homeland Security, January 8, 2026.
- "Sanctuary Politicians' Rhetoric Fuels More Than 1,150% Increase in Violence Against ICE Law Enforcement," Department of Homeland Security, November 24, 2025.
- "Immigration Enforcement Frequently Asked Questions," ICE.gov, 2026.
