Federal Agents Raid Mosque in Michigan, Arrest ISIS Combatants –Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Federal agents raided a mosque outside Dearborn, Michigan, in January 2018 and arrested 11 ISIS combatants.
The Truth:
A website that describes its content as “a whimsical playland of conservative satire” is behind false reports that federal agents raided a mosque in Michigan.
The false report appeared at the website ReaganWasRight.com on January 9, 2018. It claimed that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the ATF conducted the raid and arrested men who were planning “the next 9-11.” The attack was supposedly going to be carried out an NFL game the following weekend.
The report begins:
A mosque in a small town outside of Dearborn, Michigan has been raided by a joint task force from the FBI, Homeland Security and the ATF. According to preliminary reports from the scene, which is closed off for more than a mile, 11 “very dangerous men” who aren’t supposed to be in America at all have been apprehended plotting what would have been our next 9-11.
The report was shared widely on social media, leading some to believe that it was true. But again, ReaganWasRight.com describes its content as “satire,” which is to say that it’s not factual news.
Dearborn, Michigan, has been the target of many fake news reports like this one. The city has one of the highest concentration of Muslims in the country. And that’s made it a frequent target of false reports about Sharia law, radical Islamic protests and terrorist cells.