DEARBORN — Tuesday night was a nail biting ordeal for most Arab Americans. Across Dearborn and in Hamtramck, where high concentrations of Arab and Muslim Americans reside, the community was mobilized and went to the polls vote in promising numbers.

After dozens of volunteers and local candidates campaigned at precincts, they gathered at several venues to await results.

But even among the unprecedented number of Arab Americans on the ballot this year who were optimistic about their races, there was a sense of unease. Organizers knew their work was far from over.

The city stayed awake past midnight to await final word on who would become their next president.

Donald J. Trump was declared by a few major media outlets as president-elect of the United States.

“What’s going to happen to us?” asked a Syrian refugee living in Grand Rapids in a trembling voice as he watched the news with his mother. “We’ve just settled here. We have jobs and are now paying rent. Could we be deported back?”

Reflecting the crowd’s mood in New York City, where Clinton would have announced her victory, social media feeds flooded with anger, disappointment and cries.

Most were shocked and could not have anticipated the outcome.

Shock

Mariam Alkudari, a Clinton activist at Emerge USA, a Muslim American political action committee that works to encourage communities to vote, was among the many devastated watch party attendees at the Arab American Nation Museum.

She said their local office alone made more than 5,000 calls in Dearborn in the final days of the election. Most of those reached said they would support Clinton. 

Alkudari was worried, but held on to a fraction of hope.

“Everything he wants to do is against our Constitution,” she said. “So he might not have the power to implement the things he wants.”

Kazem Sheikh, a Pakistani Muslim from Bloomfield Hills, said although he did not fully support Clinton, he voted against Trump.

He was originally a Bernie Sanders supporter, but was not shocked that Trump won.

“It has all become a game of who has the most money to run a campaign to become president — both Trump and Hillary know how to play the game.”

Sheikh attributed Trump’s increasing backing among unexpected supporters to the large wave of criticism in the media, which he used to his advantage to desensitize people and make it the norm.

He added that it takes a minority to fully understand the adverse effect his presidency would have on immigrant communities. It would not be Trump who would inflict hate crimes, but he will spark waves of frustrated backers who will.

Fear

Just a day after the election, Dana Mohammad, a Dearborn Heights resident, experienced that effect while filling up at a gas station in her neighborhood.

“Take that shit off your head, this is my country now, bitch,” an older White man shouted at her as he drove off in his trunk, Mohammad posted on Facebook.

“I sat in my car for about eight minutes, in tears, trying to comprehend exactly what had just happened to me,” she stated.

She urged Muslim women expressing their fear about wearing the hijab to stay resilient and reject intimidation.

“Bigotry is un-American. Islamophobia is un-American. Sexism is un-American,” she continued. “Let’s stick together and let’s mobilize to protect our communities from hate.”

Hiba Krisht, a professional translator living in Indiana, is another who disclosed fear of threats aimed at her Muslim American family and friends.

“I am afraid for my hijabi mother and sister and grandma and aunts and cousins,” she posted on Facebook. “I am afraid for all the asylum seekers from those communities who haven’t had decisions issued on their cases and I’m afraid for Syrian refugees.”

Hope

Bin Khulayf, a Saudi Arabian American who recently became a citizen and voted for the first time, said Trump’s victory is more indicative of the voting system, the media and how most Americans do not trust the system or don’t care to vote, as 46 percent did not.”

“The whole thing is bizarre, I know,” he said. “But the fact that all liberal media was predicting for sure Hillary is the winner tells you how disconnected they are.”

While Trump won 279 votes in the Electoral College, which determines the winner, Clinton actually won the popular vote. She earned 59,186,057 votes vs. Trump’s 59,049,470.

Khulayf added that Trump’s win could be attributed to the Clinton campaign’s negative tone against his supporters and the Democratic National Committee’s efforts to prevent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from becoming the party’s nominee. If Sanders had been the nominee, he would have energized a larger group to defeat Trump, Khulayf said.

With a glimmer of hope, he said he does not believe Trump’s rhetoric reflects the ideals of most Americans, especially among millennials and educated White women who mostly voted for President Obama in 2012.

“I don’t think Trump would implement any of his racist policies he promised, he said. “He just knew what his voters want to hear.”

Ali Sarout, a local resident, was one of those receptive to Trump’s message, but does not think it was one of bigotry.

Sarout voted for Trump and said the president-elect’s victory in the state was not a huge surprise to most Michiganders, but a surprise to the Arab American community.

He added those who were surprised by the president-elect’s victory in Michigan, because they were “thinking locally.”

“A surprise visit from Bill [Clinton] at Al Ameer and Greenland Market was not going to win Hillary the election,” he said.

Even in Wayne County, where Clinton received almost 67 percent of the votes, Trump was favored in some towns, like Plymouth. In neighboring Macomb County, where many Christian Arabs reside, Trump won over Clinton by more than 11 percent.

Sarout said that throughout his campaign, Trump targeted Islamic fanaticism, not Muslim Americans, and did not mention deporting Muslims, just illegal immigrants.

Two days before Election Day, Trump warned a rally crowd in the solidly Democratic state of Minnesota, that if elected president, Clinton, “will import generations of terrorism, extremism and radicalism into your schools and throughout your communities” with her refugee plan.

Sarout echoed Trump’s sentiment, saying it could be true.

“Even the vetting process does not guarantee all Syrian refugees are not fanatics,” he said.

He also pointed to Trump’s response to a solution in Syria during the second presidential debate, where the candidate sides with Russia on allowing the war-torn country to find its own remedy without foreign intervention.

Clinton’s solution is to go to war and be a greater ally of Israel, he added.

Sarout said Trump’s campaign exposed America’s shortcomings and brought Islamophobia and bigotry to the forefront.

“Now, it’s the people’s time to start working on these issues,” he said.