In a chilling social media post, FBI Director Kash Patel described how Wednesday’s sniper at a Dallas ICE facility gathered intelligence online for the ambush that left one ICE detainee dead and two seriously injured. Authorities say suspected killer Joshua Jahn, 29, committed suicide after the ambush.
While retracing Jahn’s movements and writings, the FBI found he reviewed a document that listed Dallas DHS locations, and he “searched apps that tracked the presence of ICE agents.” Marcos Charles, the ICE executive associate director for enforcement and removal operations, confirmed the gunman utilized these apps to carry out the attack. In some cases, illegal immigrants use the apps so they can give ICE the slip. But in this new use, a left-wing radical employed the apps for the even more nefarious purpose of violence and terror, a reality underscored in a letter the FBI says Jahn left.
“Hopefully this will give ICE agents real terror, to think, ‘is there a sniper with [armor piercing] rounds on that roof?” a handwritten note read. The wording of Patel’s post indicated there could be more notes.
The Federalist sent emails to the media relations teams at the Google and Apple app stores. These teams are made up of people who are paid full-time wages to answer questions from the media. And the question The Federalist asked seemed like a real softball: Will the app store remove apps that track ICE or law enforcement?
The answer should be an automatic, “Yes, we are removing them. We should have never allowed such apps.”
But at the time of publication both companies had refused to commit to suspending ICE-tracking apps. Perhaps their silence means they are working on filtering a carefully crafted statement through layers of staff that could take hours or days to emerge.
Shamefully, CNN promoted an ICE-tracking app in June, prominently featuring the creator, whom it quoted in a headline: “I wanted to do something to fight back” — against ICE agents who were deporting criminal illegal aliens. The app intentionally does not track the user, so law enforcement can not investigate its use. How convenient.
In our upside-down world, radar detectors that tell speeding drivers to slow down when a cop is near are outlawed in Virginia and Washington, D.C. (rules vary in other states), but apps that allow criminals to avoid arrest, or worse, help killers stalk and shoot ICE agents, are freely available for downloading.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
