American Muslims defy Sen. Ted Cruz's call for surveillance

The signs along the thoroughfare suddenly switch to Arabic script advertising hookah shops, Middle Eastern sweets and halal meat.

At a run-down strip mall in the neighborhood known as Little Arabia, flags from a half-dozen Muslim countries flap in a stiff breeze.

After Sen. Ted Cruz called for increased surveillance of Muslims in the U.S., many people in this community and others like it either challenged the Republican presidential candidate or dismissed his comments as mostly meaningless rhetoric.

Cruz's statement on Tuesday came hours after the deadly attacks at the Brussels airport and a subway station that killed dozens of people and wounded many more.

Echoing earlier statements from Trump, Cruz also said the U.S. should stop the flow of refugees from countries where the Islamic State has a significant presence.

In Washington, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates was asked Wednesday at a news conference about calls to step up patrols of Muslim communities.

Ahmad Tarek Rashid Alam, publisher of the weekly Arabic-language Arab World newspaper and one of the immigrants who helped build Little Arabia, said anti-Muslim statements are familiar.

Sometimes, he said, he doesn't want to tell anyone that he's Muslim because "people get offended, and I'm scared of hate crimes."

Trump, who has proposed a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the U.S., said in a CNN interview that he supported Cruz's plan.

In a series of articles, The Associated Press revealed that authorities had infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups.

The Detroit suburb of Dearborn is widely known as the hometown of Henry Ford, who hired Arabs and Muslims in the early days of the Ford Motor Co. It is now one of the nation's largest and most concentrated communities of people who trace their roots to the Middle East.