DETROIT — As southeast Michigan's Muslim community prepares to fast and pray during the holy month of Ramadan, they're also being warned.

Reports of increased enforcement and detainments by the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that have led to bloodshed in Minnesota have some Muslims in Michigan concerned about gathering with their fellow congregants.

"People in the community hear about these things either through media or word or mouth, so obviously it raises concern, in particular during the month of Ramadan, when the mosques are packed every night with worshippers," said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "People wonder, will there be ICE cars or border patrol officers lingering around mosques at night?"

Ramadan, which begins Tuesday evening, involves daily fasts which are meant to deepen spiritual discipline and empathy for those less fortunate. Fast are broken at sunset, often with a gathering at a mosque, homes or restaurants.

CAIR has been visiting mosques in recent weeks, explaining to immigrant worshippers their rights should they encounter federal authorities.

Walid said the agency's main message to immigrants who are legal, permanent residents of the U.S. is to keep their paperwork on them every time they go out in public.

"Not having one's green card on them, for instance, is an offense ... so by not having it on them it could trigger some sort of proceeding that could ultimately get them deported," Walid said.

For decades, mosques and other places of worship were included in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's list of "sensitive locations," where officers were instructed not to conduct enforcement activities. On the day Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term, that policy was rescinded and replaced with a policy allowing officers to use their "discretion" and "common sense" with regard to enforcement in and around those locations.

There has been at least one report of an immigration arrest near a mosque in recent months. In December, two members of an immigrant family from Afghanistan were detained outside a mosque in Albany, New York, after saying their early morning prayer, according to a WAMC radio report.

The Muslim community in Minnesota is on especially high alert. Clashes between federal agents and protesters in the Minneapolis area resulted in two deaths since ICE and CBP launched Operation Metro Surge, which the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest-ever immigration enforcement operation.

More than 4,000 undocumented immigrants in Minnesota have been arrested as part of the crackdown, the White House said earlier this month. Minnesota is home to around 80,000 people of Somali descent, with about 78% residing in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, according to St. Paul-based Wilder Research. About 99% of Somalians are Muslim, according to U.S. Department of State data.

Imams in Minnesota said they are preaching safety as worshippers make plans for both Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic festival celebrated this year starting on the evening of March 19, marking the end of Ramadan.

"Some people avoid large gatherings, while others stop attending mosque programs they once treated as routine," Imam Aden Hassan of the Islamic Society of Willmar told Sahan Journal, a publication focused on immigrants in the state. "Talks about safety proceed any decisions related to Ramadan and Eid gatherings."

Those concerns are reverberating throughout the country, including in Metro Detroit, where communities like Dearborn and Hamtramck have some of the highest concentrations of Muslim residents in the U.S.

"Within the last couple weeks there have been reports of ICE patrolling and picking up people around a bus stop in Ypsilanti. We have a Muslim community there," Walid said.

Washtenaw County Sheriff Alyshia M. Dyer initially claimed that four individuals arrested last month by ICE agents were detained near a school bus stop in the Ypsilanti area during a student drop-off. ICE confirmed the arrests but said they did not take place near a school or bus stop.

In Detroit, police Chief Todd Bettison has said it is "against policy" for his officers to contact ICE; the City Council is considering ways it can "ban or limit" ICE activity in the city. But Walid said his office has received reports of Muslims being detained in the morning hours, in mosque parking lots in the city.

"One concern is that ICE could deploy in the future to southeast Michigan just as it has in Minneapolis," he said. "But the current concern is the reports of what ICE has been doing already in southeast Michigan in recent months."

Meanwhile, on Monday, less than 24 hours before Ramadan began, some Muslim Americans and others in Midtown were enjoying the free meals and beverages offered by Rahha Yemeni Coffee and Brunch on Woodward Avenue.

"It's a good time of year for community and family. Sometimes at mosque we do iftar at sunset but never a pre-Ramadan one. This is super cool to see," said Wayne State University student Musharrat Chowdhury, 21.

Hanan Jaffar, 34, of Dearborn Heights, 34, was excited to see a Yemeni coffee shop open in an area where Detroit Muslims are looking for meal options, especially the Ramadan iftar boxes.

"There's not a lot of other authentic Yemeni coffee shops in the area," Jaffar said.

In Warren, Steve Elturk, imam and president of the Islamic Organization of North America (IONA) mosque, said worshippers there are concerned about stepped up federal immigration enforcement, but they're just as worried about Islamophobia in the public at large during Ramadan.

In September, IONA was vandalized with spray-painted messages, damaged walls and broken windows. Elturk is concerned that people may use Ramadan as an opportunity to launch attacks on Muslims.

He's not taking any chances.

"We will have our own security, that's for sure — armed security at the door," he said. "You have to do what you have to do."

He said he would also contact Warren police and ask them to conduct extra patrols around the mosque, "at least for the first few nights (of Ramadan), when we have a maximum number of worshippers."

"We plan to the best of our ability and let God handle the rest," Elturk said.

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