Dearborn — Five men were detained and two ultimately arrested during last week’s FBI raids in Dearborn and Inkster in the early morning hours on Halloween.
The raids sparked cynical responses on social media, where users alleged, without evidence, that the entire event was staged to turn the 24-hour news cycle away from FBI Director Kash Patel’s supposed public relations issues.
Well, everyone should have kept their powder dry, because Monday’s indictments and the federal criminal complaint filed in Michigan’s Eastern District Court detail an extraordinary saga of undercover law enforcement stopping a diabolical terror attack through competent planning and quick action.
According to the 73-page charging document, Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud, two adult Dearborn residents, had planned to attack downtown Ferndale, ostensibly targeting LGBTQ nightclubs in the area with a mass shooting, with assistance by an international ISIS terror network via an unindicted and unnamed individual listed in the complaint as Co-Conspirator 1.
Admittedly, the silence and lack of details immediately following the raids caused many to ponder what was really going on behind the scenes, and the awkwardly brief deer-in-the-headlights press conferences by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel caused even more confusion.
But a more plausible theory is emerging: The new and improved Kash FBI moves fast and doesn’t wait for terror attacks to occur before they leap into action.
The FBI of old was a frustrating agency to behold—swimming in incompetence, political maneuvering, and with slow and meandering responses Americans distrusted. And don’t forget the post-Covid era, when the agency was more interested in investigating parents for wanting schools reopened or Christians protesting abortion clinics than violent criminals.
But even more unnerving for the old FBI was the endless stream of domestic terror attacks and mass shootings, in which the public learned afterward that the shooter was under investigation by the agency.
Case in point: The 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting that killed 49 people and injured another 50. The perpetrator of that ISIS-inspired attack, Omar Mateen, had been a person of interest and under FBI surveillance starting in 2013.
After the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in 2018, during which Nikolas Cruz killed 17 of his fellow students, it was discovered the FBI was aware of Cruz and his gun threats 39 days prior to the attack but failed to act.
Fast forward to 2025, and within weeks of Kash Patel’s appointment and confirmation as FBI director, a bureaucratic house-cleaning was afoot. Well, look out. The new FBI appears exceptionally fast, at least as far as Michigan in concerned.
Quick and competent counterterrorism investigations and undercover surveillance work by the FBI and their partners nabbed Melvindale native Ammar Said just hours before he planned another ISIS-inspired armed attack on Warren’s TACOM base.
Monday’s indictments of Mohmed Ali and Majed Mahmoud spotlight how deep the FBI has gotten into the domestic and international ISIS terror network.
The charging document carefully describes that a person of interest to the FBI (Co-Conspirator 1), already under long-range surveillance domestically and internationally starting in 2024 due to links to ISIS, made a brief visit to Dearborn on June 30 and was in contact with Ali.
The events of that meeting piqued the interest of FBI investigators, who continued physical and cyber surveillance on Co-Conspirator 1, who was followed as he traveled internationally.
On July 27, communications were intercepted which indicated Ali and Mahmoud—under aliases—planned to conduct an act referred to as the “same thing as France” in reference to the ISIS-inspired mass shootings at several locations that killed or injured hundreds.
During September and October, the FBI conducted round-the-clock physical and cyber surveillance on Ali and Mahmoud in such close confines the agents and assets were literally picked up on closed circuit surveillance cameras inside several Metro-Detroit gun ranges in the neighboring range lanes, only inches away from the suspects.
In addition to shooting practice, both suspects acquired more guns, ammo, and tactical gear including AR-15s, Beretta Shotguns, 1,600 rounds, forced reset triggers, and Red Dots—storing the bulk of their equipment and material in a U-Haul storage facility in Inkster.
During those same months, both Ali and Mahmoud, in addition to the other detained males, were surveilled scouting downtown Ferndale, particularly LGBTQ clubs on Woodward Avenue. In addition, this coterie of would-be Islamic terrorists met up in various parks and public locations in Dearborn and Melvindale to avoid eavesdropping as they ostensibly planned their attack.
Late in October, something more chilling reportedly occurred giving insight into the power of religious extremism and the elders whom younger Islamic males follow online and in mosques around the nation.
Ali and Mahmoud reportedly debated when to carry out the planned attack, with Ali reportedly becoming intent on perpetrating the attack on Halloween. The group used euphemisms like “Pumpkin day” in apparent coded speech.
Growing weary and expressing they wanted to hold off on the attack, the conspirators were allegedly ordered to continue as planned and “Not wait” by the elder father of an unnamed prominent U.S.-based Islamic extremist ideologue—believed to be Ahmad Musa Jibril and his father Musa Abdullah Jibril.
The two former Dearborn clerics are popular among ISIS terrorists, but they’ve been kicked out of various mosques in Dearborn.
The FBI leapt into action on October 31 arresting five persons of interest—ultimately charging Ali and Mahmoud—and seizing the firearms, ammo, and electronics at various locations in and around Dearborn—including the Inkster storage unit. Director Patel announced the raids on X.
Two days of remarkable silence followed, except for the lone voice of Dearborn attorney Amir Makled, who says he represents one of the indicted suspects, proclaiming his client to be a simple Fortnite gamer bro and legal gun owner who digs shooting at local ranges.
In that void of information, and the expectation of immediate answers, the political gong show simmered until boiling over on Sunday with sentiments of cynicism directed at the Trump administration and Patel.
Distilled Social on X was most prominent social media account promoting doubts about the raid and proliferating the notion in a subsequent Substack post:
“In this instance, Patel’s online grandstanding may have criminalized a community first and asked questions later,” the progressive account wrote. “A move that fits perfectly into his Trump brand of performative law enforcement.”
Distilled Social and other turbo-progressive influencer hubs probably should have waited just 24 hours before melting into a puddle of white guilt. The protected class Patel and FBI saved was ostensibly at the very top of their long-constructed victim pyramid: the LGBTQ Community.
Ironically, it was the old FBI, which is to say, the Obama-era FBI that was on watch during the Pulse Nightclub Shooting, but that’s an inconvenient truism lost during critics during the current moment.
Kash Patel’s New FBI agents may not be the heroes we deserve but the ones we all—the LGBTQ community included—need right now.
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.
