Dearborn, Michigan
—
Before dawn the morning of Halloween, residents of a quaint, tree-lined Michigan neighborhood were jolted awake by the blasts of detonated smoke bombs and a voice shouting in Arabic.
“This is the FBI. We have a warrant. All residents inside … come out with nothing in your hands,” a man yelled before armed federal agents stormed the home in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn.
Shortly after, FBI Director Kash Patel boasted on X the agency had “thwarted a potential terrorist attack” and arrested “multiple” people in Dearborn “allegedly plotting a violent attack over Halloween weekend.”
Considered to be the heart of Arab America, Dearborn is home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the United States and has frequently faced Islamophobic and hateful remarks. Abdullah Hammoud, the son of Lebanese immigrants, became the first Arab American mayor of Dearborn when he was elected in 2021.
Members of the community, including neighbors and attorneys for the people taken into custody, say they are skeptical of the allegations.
One of these neighbors is Laraib Irfan, who says his Dearborn community is a close-knit, peaceful place where everyone looks out for each other like family.
Irfan was woken up Friday morning by his sister, telling him the FBI agents were outside. He heard two bangs he described as so loud they sounded like bombs and gunfire.
He watched in shock as FBI agents surrounded the house two doors away from his. To his knowledge, the house was home to a family of seven — a mother, father and five sons.
At the sound of the FBI’s command, the residents stepped out of their home with their hands behind their backs, Irfan said. For hours afterward, agents filed in and out, carrying materials to gather evidence, as Michigan State Police cordoned off the surrounding streets, he added.
Two people were arrested, and three others questioned, two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the case told CNN on Friday; their ages range from 16 to no more than 29. Amir Makled, who represents one of the people arrested in the alleged plot, told CNN on Sunday three people were arrested and two were questioned. CNN has reached out to the FBI for clarification.
The FBI has not released the names of those arrested. CNN has not been able to confirm whether all those suspected of being connected to the raid have legal representation.
But as of Sunday evening, the people taken into custody still have not been charged with any crime, Makled said, a detail attorneys say speaks volumes.
“We are confident that, once the facts are reviewed objectively, it will be clear there was never any planned ‘mass-casualty’ event or coordinated terror plot of any kind,” Makled told CNN.
The two law enforcement sources told CNN about a reference to “pumpkin day,” an online chat about an ISIS-inspired attack and a shooting range visit to practice high-speed reloads with AK-47s, but actual details of the alleged plot are scarce.
“The reality here involves a small group … with a lawful interest in recreational firearms, not a terrorist cell or organized attack. All firearms were legally obtained and registered,” Makled said.
Attorney Hussein Bazzi, who says he is representing another one of the people arrested following the raid, told CNN the “pumpkin day” reference may have been “online gamer chat that was misinterpreted.”
“I have no information that’s been provided to me by the government or anybody else that there was a plot that was planned, discussed or intended to be carried out,” Bazzi said.
The FBI told CNN it was conducting law enforcement activities in the cities of Dearborn and nearby Inkster, Michigan, but has not responded to CNN’s request for additional comment.
Lack of charges and hesitancy to release information is ‘concerning’
Patel’s initial X post applauded the FBI for “crushing our mission to defend the homeland,” yet he gave no explanation or evidence to support claims of a foiled terrorist plot.
“More details to come,” he wrote — but so far, none has been alleged.
The FBI has not released any additional information, offering no clarity on when, where or how the alleged plot was meant to unfold.
“It’s curious to me,” Colin Clarke, a domestic terrorism and international security expert, told CNN. “What it makes me think is that the plot wasn’t maybe as mature as they led people to believe.”
Clarke, executive director of the security research nonprofit The Soufan Center, says authorities may be holding back details to protect a potential prosecution.
“They’re waiting to comment on it so they don’t go out and say anything that ends up hurting them in a court case,” said Clarke, who has no direct knowledge of the investigation. “Or there’s not much to this, the plot, there wasn’t much there.”
Only time will reveal the full story, he said. The delay in charges often depends on how long the FBI has been tracking an alleged plot. His central concern, he added, is whether the claim the plot was inspired by ISIS has any basis.
“Was there an actual ISIS operative communicating with these individuals, or were they just communicating with one another?” he said.
But for Dearborn’s community, the prolonged silence from authorities is raising serious concerns.
“An allegation like this is dangerous to this community,” Makled said. “So when you have the national director of the FBI putting out a statement that there was a thwarted terrorist attack and then the news covers the raids of homes in the city of Dearborn, immediately the backlash on the internet is homegrown terrorist cell.”
Footage of the raid posted on Facebook sparked bigoted comments: “A real shocker that they reside in Dearborn,” one person wrote. “Well, Dearborn does have a major Islamic population who aren’t exactly friendly to anyone else,” said another. Some accused the people in the home of being “sleeper cells.”
Although Dearborn’s large Arab population, which makes up nearly half the city, makes it an easy target for Islamophobic, racist comments, the city has been ranked the second-safest large city in Michigan, according to the FBI’s 2024 annual crime report.
“This community has been part of the state of Michigan for generations,” Makled, a Lebanese American and lifelong Dearborn resident, said. “They’re deeply ingrained in the American fabric here and this community, they’re sick and tired of being held to a different standard.”
A neighbor, who asked to only be identified as “Ahmed,” said the people who lived in the home were kind, and he was not convinced the raid was based on credible suspicion.
“You never hear anything from them, they are perfect, smiling, and I do not believe anything happened (from them), they are very good people,” he said.
When asked about the FBI’s claim they stopped a terrorist plot, Ahmed interrupts and rejects the possibility completely: “No, no, no, no,” he says. “I don’t think so.”
Another neighbor, Kathy Sisson, also speaks highly of her community; she says she’s disabled and her neighbors, who are from Brazil, Pakistan and Iraq, are constantly checking on her to make sure she’s OK.
A person in the home where the FBI activity took place who did not want to share their name told CNN the people taken into custody “were just kids” and the situation was “being blown out of proportion and shouldn’t have happened.”
Clarke warned against hasty conclusions but expressed skepticism that officials could credibly claim a foiled terrorist plot without clear, compelling evidence.
“For the administration to come out and say they thwarted a plot, I feel like they (would need) stronger evidence than just a bunch of teenagers talking sh*t in a chat room,” Clarke said.
Makled said his client’s mother has not stopped crying.
“I don’t think that my client has stopped thinking or slept for one second since the moment he’s been taken into custody because of how deeply concerned he is about what the future is bringing,” he said. “He has no control in terms of what the federal government is going to say about him.”
For many, the incident harks back to the post-9/11 era, when Arab Americans were routinely subjected to false stereotypes, covert surveillance, unequal restrictions and, all too often, threats from people who were violent and driven by hate.
“I know what went on after 9/11 and how our Arab and Muslim communities felt after that,” Clarke said. “Of course they’re under the microscope, even with the New York City mayor’s race, you see a lot of Islamophobia kind of rearing its head again. We just don’t know.”
Since the attack on the Twin Towers in New York, the FBI has prevented numerous suspected terrorist attacks by running undercover operations, where agents say they have infiltrated extremist networks to catch people who would have committed crimes.
However, Muslims have often borne the brunt of racialized state surveillance. Many were suspected of domestic terrorism, through everyday actions that were disproportionately scrutinized and subjected to FBI attention solely because of their faith, according to a 2018 study published in Critical Sociology examining patterns of surveillance targeting Muslim communities.
“We continue to be targeted and always looked at with a sense of suspicion. Dearborn’s used to this,” Makled said. “This community doesn’t want to be held in that light of suspicion anymore, and it doesn’t deserve to be.”
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American–Islamic Relations criticized the FBI’s lack of transparency and the fact that no charges have been filed. Executive Director Dawud Walid stressed that, no matter what the investigation uncovers, Muslims in Dearborn and across the US do not owe anyone an apology for the actions of others.
“People in the community are getting tired of this idea of collective guilt, or somehow we have to answer for the alleged actions of a couple of people,” Walid told CNN.
Makled urged the public to withhold judgment and wait for the results of the investigation before making assumptions about the community as additional details from the FBI are still pending.
If Patel put out a statement prematurely, “I would demand an apology from the national director,” Makled said.
“That’s how you create unity,” he added. “And that’s how you cure any error or harm that was caused by a mistake. This community is very forgiving, and we would accept that.”
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