Inside a Kroger store in Dearborn on a recent Saturday morning, attorney Majed Moughni was shopping for groceries when he was approached by a slim man dressed in all-black clothing and covering most of his face with a mask or scarf.
Moughni said the man asked him: “Do you have a visa?”
Moughni said he replied: “Excuse me?” The man then repeated the question about a visa while filming and asked Moughni additional questions, such as: “Are you legal?,” “Where were you born?,” “I need to see your visa,” and “I need to see some ID.”
Moughni, an immigrant from Lebanon, said he “initially thought, maybe he’s an ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent,” but didn’t see other people dressed like agents around him.
The encounter on Jan. 31, 2026, that Moughni described to the Free Press unnerved the attorney and may be part of a growing trend of people who impersonate ICE agents as the U.S. increasingly targets immigrant communities. In October, the FBI issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies, obtained by Property of the People through a public records request, warning about “criminal actors impersonating ICE agents.”
And it comes at a time when Dearborn has become a target for anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant extremists who often film their encounters, like the man in Kroger was allegedly doing.
The man who approached Moughni also approached a self-checkout cashier, asking her similar questions, and questioned other customers, a store employee told Moughni. ICE agents have increasingly been asking people at random, including citizens, about their immigration status and for their ID and proof of citizenship, media outlets have reported.
After Moughni asked security to call 911, Dearborn police responded but the man left the store before officers arrived.
An officer is seen speaking with the self-checkout cashier in a video Moughni took and shared with the Free Press. Other officers in four police cars later went to the Kroger and got surveillance video, according to a store security official. The man walked back to his car park in the lot and a store employee took a photo of him.
“He was trying to look like he was an ICE agent, more or less, without having the identifying features as an ICE agent,” said Moughni, who has worked on civil rights cases as an attorney. “It was pretty nerve wracking, like they can literally take me away and I got nothing. I got no passport on me or anything that I can use to save myself. If they can do this to me, and I know the law, they can really terrify a lot of people.”
In some cases over the past year, ICE has detained people who don’t have proof of citizenship on them.
ICE did not respond to questions about the incident in the Kroger store in Dearborn on Michigan Avenue, near Outer Drive. Holly Smith, a spokeswoman for Kroger, did not respond to questions about the incident and what Kroger’s policies are regarding the operations of ICE agents in their stores or those who try to impersonate them. A security director at the Dearborn Kroger store did not return a call left on voicemail.
A spokesman for the FBI Detroit office did not comment on the incident, but said they did not have any FBI agents at the store that day. Dearborn Police Cpl. Dan Bartok did not return a message asking if police have made any arrests or identified the suspect.
Moughni said after he was questioned, he asked the man “Who the hell are you?” Moughni walked away and then asked a cashier: “Why are you allowing people to come here and ask customers where they’re from and whether they have visas, while recording them?”
The cashier notified the store security officer, who asked Moughni to identify the individual, which he did, Moughni said.
In the video recorded after a Dearborn officer arrived, the self checkout cashier explained to the officer how he started questioning her.
“I was over there greeting customers … and he’s asking if I have a visa,” the cashier is heard saying on the video. “So then he asks me, ‘where were you born?’ So out of the blue, I told him, ‘Africa.'”
The cashier is white and the response she gave to the man appeared to be sarcastic.
“And then he started walking down that way and bothering other people,” she said, adding that the man took her photo.
The Dearborn officer at the scene talking with the cashier said the man may have been “mentally unstable” or trying to film antagonistic videos to post on social media, like “an agitator, like a YouTube agitator, or someone who was just mentally lost.”
Over the past year, agents with ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have increasingly used masks to cover their face and used unmarked cars, confusing some members of the public. In some cases, people are posing as ICE agents to commit crimes. A CNN report in November found two dozen cases “of people posing as ICE officers in 2025, in cases that range from political agitators seeking to intimidate immigrants to others using the guise of authority to allegedly kidnap, rob, assault or rape victims.”
In the Dearborn case, the man did not appear to commit any type of violent crime as in some other cases reported across the country by CNN, including kidnapping, robbery, rape or assault. But the harassment is worrisome, Moughni said, especially in cities like Dearborn, which has a high percentage of Middle Eastern immigrants. Over the past year, there has been a growing number of rightwing influencers going to Dearborn and targeting Muslims to film what residents say are provocative videos with misleading messages.
“It’s scary for somebody like me, who’s educated, who knows the law, and I can only imagine how terrifying it would be for somebody who doesn’t know the law, who’s not going to be as alert as I was,” Moughni said. “If I didn’t put a stop to it, he was going to just keep on going. He wasn’t going to stop with me or the cashier. He was just going to keep on terrifying people.”
Contact Niraj Warikoo: nwarikoo@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: ICE agent impersonator at Dearborn grocery store concerns immigrants
Reporting by Niraj Warikoo, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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