Warren — Federal agents arrested 19-year-old Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said on Tuesday in Warren in an attempted terrorist act.
According to a statement from the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, Said had devised and intended to conduct a mass shooting at the U.S. Army’s Tank-Automotive & Armaments Command (TACOM) in Warren.
Said is alleged to have made contact with two undercover agents and informed them of his plan to conduct a terror act on the Warren base. He reportedly provided ammunition, detailed plans of the base, training, and claimed to be acting at the direction of ISIS, an international Islamic terror organization.
At the time of his arrest, Said was allegedly in the vicinity of the TACOM and flying a drone over the facility.
A Melvindale native, Said is reported to have been a former member of Michigan Army National Guard, a 2024 graduate of Melvindale High School, and an accomplished D-II high school wrestler.
A source close to the Melvindale wrestling program confirmed Said was a former student at Melvindale, a varsity letterman, and was shocked to learn Said was allegedly associated with ISIS and involved in a terror act against a U.S. Army base: “He was always helping out with the team and involved with all the wrestlers.”
According to the FBI affidavit and criminal complaint, Said made contact in June 2024 with an undercover agent he believed was an ISIS supporter and indicated his desire to engage in “Violent Jihad, either by traveling to ISIS-held territory abroad or by carrying out an attack in the United States.”
During those initial contacts with agents, Said revealed his association with the Michigan Army National Guard and claimed his enlistment was to gain skills for future terror attacks, indicating his radicalization may have started at least two years ago.
He was recorded telling undercover agents, “I did it for the training. I wanted to train so that I know what I’m doing, I know how they think, and how they act, you know. I wanted to get military training before I just go somewhere.”
On July 18, 2024, FBI agents conducted a covert search of Said’s iPhone while he was still employed with the Army National Guard and had relinquished his phone during a security sweep prior to boarding a military aircraft.
At that time, the FBI found Facebook messages between Said and an unnamed user located in Palestine. Said sent a message indicating he was ready to engage in a terror act, and the unnamed user instructed Said to continue the conversation on Telegram. Multiple encrypted Telegram messages were located on Said’s phone that included ISIS imagery.
In August 2024, Said was purported to have additional contact with FBI undercover agents and confidential sources in the employ of the FBI who Said believed were ISIS supporters.
Subsequent communications between Said and undercover agents resulted in recordings wherein Said identified his enemies as “military soldiers, Jews, Americans, tourists, and other Muslims,” according to the complaint.
Beginning in November 2024, according to the charging documents, Said began discussing in detail his plans for attacking the Warren TACOM base and told undercover FBI agents his opinions and beliefs regarding ISIS.
Said allegedly claimed to be against radical Islam and ISIS as a teenager. “You know, growing up as a kid, I swear to God I used to think that ISIS was the worst, you know, type of people. I used to think that they were horrible. I used to tell my friends, they [ISIS] don’t represent Islam.”
But he soon changed his mind.
“And you know, when I looked at it from the other perspective, I swear to God, you know, just looking at their face, you know, beards, they’re reading the Quran, they’re doing this such and such, helping the people.”
In December 2024, Said discussed his intent to travel to Syria during the fall of Damascus and join with rebel forces as former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fled to Russia; however, Said never purchased a ticket, and his communication with agents lessened until late January and early February, when his planning to attack TACOM resumed.
Through late winter and spring of this year, Said and the agents engaged in drone reconnaissance of the base until finally determining the date of attack as May 13.
In recorded communications with undercover agents in the day leading up to the planned attack, Said allegedly expressed regret for his intended action, only one time stating, “It sucks, because my family is here.”
There’s a larger, more unsettling reality to the Ammar Said situation and his presence in Southeast Metro Detroit, and adjacent to Dearborn—a reality the media and most normal Michigan residents are loath to acknowledge.
Since October 7, 2024, when Hamas radicals attacked Israel, murdering thousands, and kidnapping several hundred Israelis, including many with dual American citizenship, the Dearborn area has experienced a vibe shift.
Within the last 18 months, Dearborn and Detroit have hosted several free Palestine rallies wherein eliminationist vernacular is used by speakers, including Michigan Representative Rashida Tlaib.
A Hezbollah terrorist killed in the Pager Operation had his funeral at a Dearborn mosque, and a Hezbollah asset on the Terror Watch List has been hiding out in a suburban Dearborn home since the Covid pandemic.
Most Michigan residents instinctively cling to multicultural tropes about the cultural richness of Metro Detroit, with its large concentration of Muslim and Arab Americans.
But maybe we should be asking this: What the hell is going on?
Jay Murray is a writer for Michigan Enjoyer and has been a Metro Detroit-based professional investigator for 22 years. Follow him on X @Stainless31.
