Former mayor says immigrants are unfairly targeted

President Donald Trump and former mayor Amer Ghalib

By Charles Sercombe
Former mayor Amer Ghalib recently attended a city council meeting, where he called for a change in the “narrative” on how some people view immigrants.
Ghalib cited the gas station clerk who recently played a key part in helping police officers rescue a kidnapped female teen.
Ghalib pointed out that the clerk, Abdulrahman Abohatem, is a Green Card holder.
The reason he referenced him was to stress that immigrants aren’t always the “threat” they are being labeled lately.
“We need to change the narrative that the immigrants are a threat,” he said. “They are not. We have a lot of good people.”
Ghalib knows what it is like to be an immigrant, having emigrated here at age 17 from Yemen.
He said that he hears about a Yemeni-American citizen “being killed somewhere, in New York, California, Mississippi, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Those are people who come to fight for a better life and a lot of them are citizens. So the narrative that those are a threat to the American people is not accurate.”
Ghalib conceded that he is working for President Trump’s administration, as a Senior Consultant for Strategic Partnerships with AmeriCorps. Trump has come under criticism for spreading anti-immigrant rhetoric.
In the past, Trump called immigrants “not people,” “snakes” and “garbage.”
Trump is particularly focused on those of the Muslim faith. Ghalib is also a Muslim, as is the entire city council. Many Muslims in Hamtramck supported Trump, at Ghalib’s urging, for president during Trump’s campaign in 2024.
Also, many in the Yemeni community supported Trump even though he said immigrants from Yemen are “terrorists.”
During his first campaign, he issued a press release saying:
“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
And he offered this Easter message recently:
“Happy Easter to all, except those who want to destroy our Country with their radical religions and ideologies. We are a Christian nation, and we will not let Islam or any other force replace our heritage. It’s a Crusade for survival!”
Despite Trump’s comments on immigrants and Muslims, Ghalib has said that what attracted him and others to the Republican Party was their stance on “family values.”
Posted May 1, 2026