Sole survivor of ICE Dallas shooting seeks U visa after escaping armed attack

José Andrés Bordones was sitting in a white van outside the ICE facility near Interstate 35E in Dallas on the morning of September 24th when the shooting started. He was handcuffed, squeezed in with nine other detainees—Mexicans, a Salvadoran, and one other Venezuelan—being transported for processing. The first sounds confused him. "At first we thought it was noise from the building," he would later tell Univision by phone from a detention center in Texas. "But when the bullets started hitting the van, we understood."

One round grazed his arm. Another entered through his shoulder. A third scraped across his head. He crouched as low as the handcuffs allowed, pressing himself against the metal floor of the van, begging the driver to move, to hit the button to get them inside the building. Around him, people screamed. Some prayed. Some wept. Bordones, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, thought only of his wife and two daughters in Maracay. He was certain he would never see them again.

When the shooting finally stopped, a federal employee managed to open the door. The detainees ran for the office. Bordones was bleeding heavily from his shoulder. Someone applied a tourniquet. "The agents were in shock," he remembered. "Nobody knew what to do." He was taken by patrol car to Parkland Hospital, where he spent two days. A CT scan confirmed the bullet that entered his shoulder had missed his skull by millimeters. Had it traveled one millimeter lower, he would not have survived to tell the story.

Two others did not survive. Norlan Guzmán Fuentes, 37, from El Salvador, died at the scene. Miguel Ángel García, 31, from Mexico, died days later in the hospital. The shooter, identified by the FBI as Joshua Jahn, 29, had fired from a nearby rooftop and then taken his own life. No ICE agents were wounded.

Bordones had entered the United States legally on August 12, 2024, through the CBP One program with an approved appointment and work authorization. Months later, he was detained during a traffic stop in Tarrant County. He was riding as a passenger when the driver was asked for a license he didn't have. The officer then asked for Bordones' license. He explained he didn't have the physical card but had a photo on his phone. The officer rejected it. Within five minutes, a patrol car arrived and he was arrested. At the station, he learned there was a pending arrest warrant for a minor theft from January—a motorcycle helmet theft committed by a friend. Bordones had been present but claimed he took nothing, though he acknowledged being complicit. He spent eight days in custody. A judge told him his sentence was paid but that ICE would decide his fate. He was told he would be transported to Dallas for processing and then deported.

That was the morning of September 24th. After the shooting, after the hospital, after the tourniquet and the CT scan, Bordones was returned to ICE custody at the Prairieland detention center. His immigration case continues. His immigration attorney, Giancarlo Franco, is now pursuing a U visa on his behalf—a humanitarian benefit available to victims of crimes who cooperate with authorities. Franco told Univision that Bordones' case qualifies based on the severity of the crime and his cooperation with the FBI investigation. But the minor theft charge from January could complicate his eligibility. If he is deported before the visa is approved, the application can continue from Venezuela, but it will require constant legal support from abroad.

Bordones speaks slowly now, his voice still trembling when he calls his family in Venezuela each week. "When I close my eyes, I hear the gunshots again," he said. His body is healing. His mind is not. "Sometimes my arm hurts. Sometimes my head burns. But the strongest pain is the fear." He arrived legally wanting to work, wanting to build a life. Now he does not know. "I want to stay and I don't want to stay," he said. "I'm alone here. I don't know what could happen to me tomorrow." He calls himself fortunate. He says he was born again that day. But fortunate and terrified are not opposites when you are waiting to learn whether you will be allowed to remain in the country that nearly killed you, or sent back to the one you fled.