Terror Attack Plans Not Part Of Dearborn Raid: FBI

(UPDATED) DEARBORN, MI — A Thursday night FBI raid on a home in the 7200 block of Jonathon Street in Dearborn that was done under the cloak of national security did not involve a planned terror attack, explosives or anyone locally, the Detroit Free Press reported Friday afternoon. An unnamed source told the newspaper no charges are imminent and the raid did not involve a young man living in the home.

The raid, instead, appears to be a coordinated effort between the FBI’s Detroit office and a second FBI office in another state, the Free Press reported. Authorities completed the raid shortly before midnight Thursday and declined to explain reasons for the move.

"FBI personnel are on scene conducting a law enforcement operation,” FBI spokesman Tim Wiley said in a statement. “There is no threat to public safety."

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The Detroit Free Press earlier reported that the operation involved an incident that happened out of state. Suspects tied to the incident were tracked down to Dearborn. The home sits just north of Warren Road between Schaefer Road and Oakman Boulevard.

The newspaper interviewed former FBI Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit office Andy Arena. He told the Free Press the “national security” raid likely means one of two things:

"It tells me it's either a terrorism case, or B, an espionage spying case," Arena told the newspaper. He said if it was an explosives case, the raid would have involved bomb-sniffing dogs and nearby neighbors would have been evacuated. The Free Press reported that neither of those things happened.

"They likely went in there looking for people or records or computers, cell phones, iphones, those types of things," Arena said. "What they're doing now is they are looking at what they took from there – the people, the evidence – and they're trying to decipher it. 'Where does it fit?' "

The FBI has not released further details about the raid or its purpose. The Patch will update the story as more facts become available.