It was still dark when, at about 5.15am last October, her 61-year-old husband and 12-year-old son, Abdullah, arrived at the Furqan mosque for morning prayers. Abdullah recalls his father being approached by two men outside the mosque, grabbing him and asking for his papers. After a brief conversation, he says he was allowed to call his mother and told to go inside the mosque by the agents. When she arrived minutes later, her husband and the agents were gone.

Things have worsened in the months since.___

…

“The level of anxiety among people is at its highest; we’ve never seen something like this,” says Imad Hamad, executive director of the Dearborn-based American Human Rights Council.

Dearborn has been on edge for months. In November 2025, rightwing provocateurs held anti-Islam rallies in the city and attempted to burn a copy of the Qur’an. At a city council meeting on 18 November 2025, extremists hurled insults and Islamophobic slurs at local leaders. On 31 January, a masked person allegedly impersonating an ICE agent was reported in a Dearborn supermarket asking shoppers about their visa status.

“We thought that after the national tragedy of September 11 we would never face something more difficult than that particular experience,” Hamad says, referencing the waves of anti-Arab and Islamophobia that followed the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “Nowadays, it’s much tougher; there’s no comparison even – people are very concerned, very worried as they try to pursue their normal life.”