Federal agents are hunting a suspect after someone threw an improvised firebomb at Atlanta’s ICE office Tuesday night, it caught on a fence and did no damage.

City police first answered the call at the downtown Immigration and Customs Enforcement office at 180 Ted Turner Drive. Around 9:30 p.m., FBI and Department of Homeland Security investigators arrived to take over the scene, The Hill reported.

Local station WSB-TV said officers recovered a plastic lighter, a shopping bag, and what looked like two bottles of lighter fluid from a sidewalk near the building. No injuries or building damage were reported from the Tuesday night incident.

The FBI put the public threat level in plain terms.

In a statement obtained by NewsNation, the bureau said:

"FBI personnel and evidence response technicians are on site collecting evidence,"

and added:

"There is no known threat to public safety at this time,"

Bottle snagged on the fence before it could do more harm

Federal officials later described the object itself with more precision. The Washington Examiner reported that a man threw a bottle serving as an improvised incendiary device at the Atlanta ICE building. The device caught on a fence and did not cause further damage.

DHS called the bottle “an improvised incendiary device.” That is not peaceful protest. It is an attempt to set fire to a federal law-enforcement facility.

Investigators are still seeking the person who threw it. No arrest has been announced. No motive has been stated in official releases tied to this night’s attack.

The FBI has chased other high-priority fugitives in recent months, including cases that put an ex-Hollywood CEO on a Most Wanted fraudsters list over an alleged multimillion-dollar bank scheme. Finding the Atlanta thrower should get the same urgency.

Atlanta’s ICE office has been hit before

This was not the first time someone tried to burn the place. In July 2020, rioters attacked the same city’s ICE building with rocks, cinder blocks, Molotov cocktails, and lighter fluid, causing more than $78,000 in damage, Fox News reported.

Federal prosecutors charged Ronald Scott Watson, then 28 and of Kennesaw, Georgia, with arson and destruction of government property in that case. The FBI later said the fugitive may have changed his appearance and may be dressing in women’s clothing. Agents offered a $10,000 reward and warned he should be considered armed and dangerous.

U.S. Attorney Theodore Hertzberg put the 2020 violence in blunt terms:

"The right to peacefully protest never excuses acts of violence, like smashing windows and attempting to set fire to a government building,"

Steven Schrank added:

"Setting fire to a government building is not only an attack on bricks and mortar, it is an attack on the rule of law and the safety of our communities,"

Those words still apply. A federal building that houses immigration officers is not a free-fire zone for activists with bottles and lighter fluid.

Federal work against illicit networks has not stopped in other arenas either, including when the FBI seized more than $560,000 in cryptocurrency bound for Hamas. Attacks on domestic ICE offices deserve the same hard line.

Fire attacks on immigration sites are piling up

The Washington Examiner noted that at least three other current or proposed immigration facilities have faced similar fire attacks this year. The Atlanta toss fits a wider pattern of targeting the agencies tasked with enforcing immigration law.

Some coverage frames the climate as “public outrage” over mass deportation policy. Outrage does not license arson. Officers who remove illegal immigrants are doing the job Congress wrote into statute. Throwing a firebomb at their workplace is a crime against the people who keep the system running.

Separate recent flashpoints have already raised the temperature around ICE. A California lawmaker claimed immigrant officers broke an American citizen’s arm over a weekend incident. Earlier this month in New York City, an ICE officer shot and wounded a man; DHS said that man had a prior grand larceny conviction and a string of earlier arrests. Those disputes get wall-to-wall attention. Attempts to torch the officers’ building should get the same scrutiny, aimed at the attackers, not the badge.

Immigration enforcement is also moving in the courts and on the paperwork side, including cases where federal agents seize a passport and devices while building a deportation case. None of that work is helped when someone tries to burn the field office.

What remains unanswered

As of the latest official word, agents have evidence from the sidewalk and a description of an improvised device that snagged on a fence. They do not have a named suspect in custody for Tuesday night. They have not reported fire damage to the structure. They have not released a full evidence inventory beyond the lighter, bag, and apparent lighter-fluid bottles described by local television.

The public still needs basic answers: Who threw it? Was the bottle lit when it left the thrower’s hand? Are the recent fire attacks on immigration sites linked by ideology, by group, or by copycat impulse? Federal investigators are the ones who can close those gaps.

FBI field work has drawn intense public attention in other recent probes, including when agents descended on a high-profile D.C. home in a separate misconduct investigation. A firebomb aimed at an ICE office is not a sideshow. It is an assault on lawful authority.

Illegal immigrants who break into the country, and activists who treat ICE offices like targets, both test whether the government will defend its own doors. Tuesday night in Atlanta was another test. The fence stopped the bottle. The next one might not. Law-and-order means hunting the thrower, charging the crime, and refusing to treat attacks on immigration officers as politics by other means.