Working-class Americans say their town is the next Dearborn — and they've had enough

WARREN, Mich. — Neighbors remember the sound of church bells ringing on Sundays.

A brick building with two sharply sloped roofs and a steeple — a Lutheran church for more than 80 years — still stands, but the cross that once stood atop the steeple is gone. About six years ago, the property was sold and turned into the Al Ihsaan Islamic Center.

"They’ll turn anything into a mosque," Justin Tye, 57, told Fox News Digital during a guided tour of his hometown, where the foreign-born Muslim population has grown significantly over the past decade.

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Tye remembers the church as the centerpiece of his American suburb where local children would gather on the lawn to play pickup sports.

Lebanese, Iraqi and Syrian immigrants, mostly Chaldean Christians, began moving to the Detroit area in the early 20th century, after Henry Ford's combustion engine drove demand for laborers in the newly-minted auto industry.

Warren, now the third-largest city in Michigan after Detroit and Grand Rapid, exploded almost overnight with the post-World War II auto manufacturing boom, as war veterans moved to the area to work for Ford and General Motors. The blue-collar, white-picket-fence community incorporated as a town in 1957.

After leaving Warren in his adulthood, Tye returned 13 years ago and purchased his childhood home. At that time, he says, it hadn't changed dramatically.

Now, it’s much different.

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Shortly after his return, foreign-born Muslims began flocking to the area.

Wars in the 1990s and 2000s led to a boom of Middle Eastern migrations, as America took in a growing Muslim refugee and immigrant population. Longstanding chain migration policies allowed family members to follow their relatives to the United States, and foreign immigrant visas have exploded in recent years.

This, Tye said, has been the story of Warren. But his town’s plight is overshadowed in the media by nearby Dearborn, a now Muslim-majority city that has garnered national and international attention.

Within a seven mile radius of his neighborhood, there are now five mosques. Fox News Digital toured the area while Tye pointed them out.

An old industrial machinery business is now a mosque, as is a former Baptist church.

Tye pointed out a residential home that local Muslims sought to turn into a mosque before a bitter zoning battle, where the Warren City Council eventually decided against the change.

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Tye and several neighbors interviewed by Fox News Digital feel like they're being pushed out of their own hometown.

"It all started when they bought the mosque, roughly six years ago," said Tye, standing on the street corner in front of Al Ihsaan alongside his longtime neighbor, Wendy Schneider.

"After Ramadan, they would have their [Eid al-Fitr] prayer service. It was unannounced. We didn't know anything," he continued. "All of a sudden, we were just woken up to 100-plus people behind the mosque, with an Imam on a podium with big amplifier speakers, belting out his prayer service. So it woke up the whole neighborhood."

Since that day, Tye says the neighborhood has turned to "chaos," especially during Muslim holidays and weekly Friday afternoon prayers.

Schneider, noting that she requires frequent doctors appointments, doesn’t make plans to leave her home on Friday afternoons, when worshippers flood the neighborhood for Jummah prayers.

Both neighbors claim the roads have become more dangerous, accusing the town's immigrant residents of driving erratically and claiming those who don't speak English don't fully understand the rules of the road.

"One thing that I've found is that the driving conditions around here are very dangerous, and especially on their Friday, I make no appointments," Schneider said. "Because it's too dangerous to try to leave my house."

For the same reason, Tye didn’t renew his motorcycle license plates this year.

Michigan motor vehicle accident data shows that in 2010, the city had 3,607 crashes. In 2024, the last year for which the data was available, Warren had 4,086, a 13.3% increase. Nationwide trends show about an 11% increase in crashes during the same time period.

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A third neighbor, who has lived in Warren since 1971 and who declined to be named, echoed to Fox News Digital that the influx has disrupted their way of life.

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"Seems like every restaurant that closes up — American restaurant — there's a Muslim restaurant that opens up. I've seen four or five of them so far," he said.

A fourth neighbor, who also asked not to be named, was born and raised in Warren in a home his family has owned since 1966. Like Tye, he left Warren but later returned. It's been a decade since he came back.

"I'm normally laid back. Things don't bother me," he said. "But it's like, this is my neighborhood and they're just taking it over, and that's what bothers me. And they don't care."

Tye said: "This whole neighborhood has been flipped in a decade — less than a decade — to Muslim. Sure enough, they're nice, they wave and everything. But I go by their actions, and their actions aren't nice."

"Disrespecting the neighborhood, disrespecting the people who live here, parking in our driveways, blocking our driveways, parking on our lawns," he continued, rattling off examples of how life has changed.

A local outlet ran a story in 2021 accusing residents of harassment of the Muslim worshippers during Eid-al-Fitr celebrations. "It’s like Christmas for us and to have people attack you on a holy day, it does hurt a little bit more," worshiper Mubarak Mozeb told WDIV at the time. Others added that they didn't feel welcome in the neighborhood.

Tye told Fox News Digital he's never woken up his entire neighborhood with loudspeakers on Christmas.

Neighbors feel unsupported by local officials, including the Warren Police Department.

While some officers have expressed sympathy for their plight, the community members speculate that their hands are tied by city officials who value political correctness.

Tye said that Warren's mayor, Lori Stone, refuses to speak with them.

"You never get to talk to Mayor Stone. You get to talk to her secretary, who's a Muslim, who informed myself and my neighbors that we need to respect them because they're Muslims," he said.

"They will do absolutely nothing but gaslight you," he said of the police and the city's elected officials.

City hall and the Warren Police Department disputed these claims when reached by Fox News Digital.

In a statement, Stone claimed she wasn't aware of any of the issues neighbors brought up in their interviews and insisted her administration "takes resident concerns seriously and works diligently to support the community by addressing issues and assisting with problem-solving."

Stone also said the claims, relayed to her office by Fox News Digital, were "broad and lack sufficient information for the City to verify or investigate the alleged incidents."

"To date, my office has not received the complaints or concerns outlined in your email, nor has the Warren Police Department provided any updates indicating problems related to the matters you describe," the response notes.

The Warren Police Department addressed several incidents relayed to them, claiming it "takes all quality-of-life concerns including parking and noise complaints seriously, regardless of where they originate." It said the last incident they responded to was in March.

"In previous years when officers responded to calls in the area, they consistently found that while vehicle volume can be high, all vehicles were legally parked," the statement continued. "In the past, noise complaints associated with the area were primarily reported during the daytime, which fall outside the restrictions of the city's general noise ordinances."

The department added that it has not received any directives from city hall to exempt any areas of the city from law enforcement.

Stone's office did not return a follow-up comment request. The Al Ihsaan Islamic Center did not return Fox News Digital's request for comment.