Some U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities are heavily secured, closed off behind metal fences, hardened doors and armed guards. Many are in federal buildings built with a focus on security. Detainees are often moved in and out of buildings through underground parking garages.
And in other cases, the outer perimeter is little more than a chain-link fence topped with a few strands of barbed wire.
That’s the situation in Dallas, where authorities say a gunman opened fire Wednesday on an ICE office from a nearby rooftop, spraying bullets into a transport van, killing one detainee and critically injuring two more.
The gunman then took his own life, authorities said.
John Torres, a former acting director of the agency and former head of what is now called its Enforcement and Removals Division, said ICE field offices — and the security around them — vary widely.
Torres noted that some facilities, like the one in Dallas, have exposed loading areas for detainee buses, which pose risks for escape and attack. Other potential vulnerabilities range from vantage points for snipers and long outdoor lines that are allowed to form without protection.
“I would assure you that ICE, after today, is going to be taking a hard look at physical security assessments for all of their facilities,” said Torres, now the head of security and technology consulting at Guidepost Solutions.
The range of offices can be startling: In San Diego, for example, ICE’s field office is on the second floor of a heavily secured federal building, with detainee buses loaded in a basement garage. In San Antonio, ICE shares a building with a bank.
Immigration facilities have seen a series of attacks in recent months, from a July 4 assault by attackers in body armor on a detention center southwest of Dallas to a man who fired dozens of rounds with an assault rifle at federal agents leaving a U.S. Border Patrol facility in south Texas.
At least 11 people have been charged in connection with the July 4 attack, which left a police officer injured. Authorities in south Texas say that attacker was shot and killed after injuring a police officer.
Shortly after the Wednesday shooting, Vice President JD Vance posted on the social platform X that “the obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop.”
Later Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered security tightened at ICE facilities across the U.S., according to a post from the Department of Homeland Security on X.
Security at immigration facilities tends to increase when threats become clearer.
In suburban Chicago, for example, federal authorities erected a fence around an immigration processing center after tensions flared with protesters in recent days. President Donald Trump's administration has stepped up immigration enforcement in the Chicago area for weeks, resulting in hundreds of arrests. The center, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Chicago, has long been the site of peaceful protests. The brick facility, used to temporarily hold immigrants before they’re detained or deported, is being used as the “primary processing location” for the recent crackdown, according to village officials.
Ahead of the latest immigration operation, federal officials boarded up some of the center’s windows.
Federal agents’ response to activists has also become increasingly aggressive, using a chemical agent and physical force against people trying to block vehicles. Armed agents patrol the rooftop.
Sixteen people have been arrested outside the center, according to federal authorities who have characterized the activists as “rioters.”
Observers note that no matter the security level, it’s impossible to foresee every potential problem.
“This is absolutely horrible and it’s also the kind of thing that it’s really hard to protect against,” Deborah Fleischaker, an ICE chief of staff during former President Joe Biden's administration, said of the Dallas attack.
“This is not the kind of threat that they have historically dealt with, and not a sort of bread-and-butter law enforcement security issue,” she said.
Associated Press reporters Elliot Spagat in San Diego; Sophia Tareen in Chicago; and Jamie Stengle in Dallas contributed to this story.
A law enforcement agents search a vehicle near the scene of a shooting at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Dallas on Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)
ATLANTA (AP) — Hundreds of flights were canceled or delayed Tuesday, one day after powerful storms swept across the eastern half of the country and upended air travel in a cross-section of cities. Travelers have been facing additional jams at airport security checkpoints as a partial government shutdown strains screener staffing.
The disruptions come at an already challenging time for air travel, in part because the shutdown that began Feb. 14 has pressured staffing at some security checkpoints. At the same time, airports are crowded with spring break travelers and fans heading to March Madness games, the annual NCAA men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments.
More than 750 flights scheduled to fly into, out of or within the U.S. have been called off as of early Tuesday, and about 1,300 were delayed, according to flight-tracking site FlightAware.
Flight delays and cancellations piled up Monday at some of the nation’s largest airports, including those in New York, Chicago and Atlanta. The storm system that dumped heavy snow across the Midwest raced toward the East Coast with high winds reaching gusts near 50 mph (80 km) in parts of New York, the National Weather Service said.
Kelly Price, who was trying to get home to Colorado after a family vacation in Orlando, Florida, said her Sunday night flight wasn’t canceled until early Monday.
“By that time the only place for us to sleep was the airport floor. So we’re all tired and frustrated,” she said, adding that the soonest she and her family could book another flight doesn’t leave until Tuesday afternoon.
The nationwide cancellations on Monday included about 600 in and out of Chicago O’Hare International, more than 470 at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International and over 450 at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, according to FlightAware.
Citing severe weather, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops at Hartsfield-Jackson and Charlotte Douglas International Airport and ground delays at JFK and Newark Liberty International Airport.
Danielle Cash found herself stranded in St. Louis on Sunday while trying to get home to Tampa, Florida, after a weekend girls’ trip to Las Vegas. Now she’s spending several hundred dollars more than planned on a hotel room in a snowy city she wasn’t dressed for.
“It was 80 degrees in Tampa when I left and then going to Vegas," she said. “And it was 90 degrees in the desert.”
Cash said she’s now booked on a flight that will take her to Tennessee before finally returning to Tampa by Tuesday afternoon.
The storms unfolded just as airport security screeners missed their first full paycheck over the weekend. The current partial government shutdown affects only the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the Transportation Security Administration.
Democrats in Congress have said Homeland Security won’t get funded until new restrictions are placed on federal immigration operations following the fatal shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minneapolis earlier this year.
It is the third shutdown in less than a year to leave TSA workers temporarily without pay. Once the government reopens, employees will have to wait for back pay.
Some airports have reported longer security lines because of staffing shortages as more TSA workers take on second jobs, can’t afford gas to get to work or leave the profession altogether. Homeland Security has said more than 300 TSA agents have quit since the start of the shutdown.
TSA union leaders in Atlanta held a news conference Monday outside Hartsfield-Jackson, warning that air travelers could face increasingly long wait times as the shutdown continues. Even so, union leaders said, many officers are still reporting to work despite mounting financial strain.
Many TSA workers “are coping with eviction notices, vehicle repossessions, empty refrigerators and overdrawn bank accounts,” said Aaron Barker, a local leader with the American Federation of Government Employees. Supporters behind him held signs reading, “We want a paycheck, not a rain check.”
Travelers flying out of New Orleans on Sunday and Monday were advised to arrive at least three hours early “due to impacts from the federal government’s partial shutdown,” Louis Armstrong International Airport said on X. And the airport in Austin, Texas, shared a video on X taken at 5:30 a.m. local time showing the security line spilling out onto the sidewalk outside.
Back in Atlanta, Mel Stewart and his wife arrived four hours earlier than usual for their flight out of Hartsfield-Jackson to make up for longer TSA lines.
“I think it’s being politicized way too much — way too much,” Stewart said Monday of the shutdown. “And these people are working. They work hard, and for TSA people not to get paid, that’s silly.”
Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Associated Press reporters Margery A. Beck in Omaha, Nebraska, and Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu contributed to this report.
People wait in a departure terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Travelers wait in line at a security checkpoint at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilie Megnien)
People wait in a departure terminal at Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
A man sleeps in the baggage claim area of Ronald Reagan National Airport, in Arlington, Va., Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)
Jamie Sims left, and Carlos Serna, right, try to get some rest as they wait for their cancelled flight to El Paso, texas to be rescheduled at Love Field Airport in Dallas, Monday, March 16, 2026. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)
