Two Dallas-area Democratic lawmakers went to the FBI on Thursday to demand more information about the three detainees who were shot, one fatally, in their home state earlier in the week.
Reps. Marc Veasey and Jasmine Crockett went to the FBI’s headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, on Thursday afternoon to ask why they hadn’t heard back about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees who were shot. They argued that the lack of information about the shooting’s victims was unusual.
“If they had just had press conferences, if they had just briefed members of Congress the way that we normally do things around here, then we wouldn’t be in this situation that we are now,” Veasey told NOTUS before entering.
They were unsuccessful: Both lawmakers said they were turned away by the staff inside, who told them they couldn’t meet with FBI Director Kash Patel — meaning they walked out not knowing the victims’ names.
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In the minutes they were inside, Crockett could be seen through the tinted glass doors, gesturing, standing alongside Veasey. Veasey represents the area where the shooting took place early Wednesday morning, near an ICE field office in Dallas. Officials have said one detainee died and two others are in critical condition.
The FBI on Thursday released more information about the shooter. In an X post, Patel said that notes and evidence from the shooter’s devices showed “a high degree of pre-attack planning.”
Within hours of the shooting on Wednesday, Patel tried to tie it to an “idealogical motive,” posting a picture on X of what he said was preliminary evidence: unspent shell casings, one of which was labeled “anti-ICE” in capital letters.
“We still don’t know the names of the victims. Those victims have families. Those victims probably have families that live in Texas,” Veasey told reporters in front of the building, after he said staff turned him away.
“They want these victims to remain faceless so they can continue to perpetuate this story for political purposes,” Veasey continued.
On Wednesday, Mexico’s foreign ministry confirmed that “one of the seriously injured victims is a Mexican national,” adding that officials were “waiting for authorization to visit the hospitalized Mexican citizen.”
Veasey told NOTUS immediately after the first news conference about the shooting that he didn’t trust the FBI to investigate, saying Patel’s responses seemed “overly political.”
More than 24 hours after the shooting, both lawmakers said they don’t trust the FBI to investigate it properly. Both blamed Patel’s leadership.
“I would like some corroboration from at least another agency before I say that I’m fully trusting anything that they say, because it was not that long ago that they evidenced that they would put political propaganda over being honest, truthful and transparent,” Crockett said, pointing to Patel’s rush to post through the FBI’s search for a suspect after Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
“If it’s coming from the FBI, and it’s not been confirmed by another source, I doubt it,” Crockett said.
The FBI declined to comment.
“We have a DHS that is run by someone who likes to cosplay more than do the actual work that she should be doing, who is out here telling people that this is why it happened or this is what happened,” Crockett told reporters, referencing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. “The first thing that should have come out of anyone’s mouth that was engaged with this investigation is who died.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Veasey said the FBI keeps ignoring his questions about the shooting, and that’s why the Texas Democrats showed up to try to get answers.
“We’ve been calling, and no one will get back with us!” Veasey told reporters.
“Normally, they get back to us very quickly. I’ve never had this sort of issue from the FBI,” Veasey said. “I don’t want to blame the rank-and-file agents and the people that work at the FBI. It’s Kash Patel, because he is doing the bidding of Donald Trump.”
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