HAMTRAMCK — Hamtramck, Michigan, made history last year by becoming what appears to be the first city in the country to elect a majority-Muslim city council (notably, the city also became the first to have a majority-Muslim population in 2013), spurring an international media feeding frenzy to descend upon the city. Everyone from the Washington Post to the German media came to report on the notable changes at City Hall, as the threat of ISIS abroad and growing Islamophobia at home dominated news cycles.

Reporters declared that residents were nervous and tense about the city’s changing demographics. Hamtramck soon became fodder for right-wing media personalities, who announced that Muslim terrorists had invaded the city. Some nicknamed it “Shariaville, USA,” convinced that Islamic law was about to replace the Constitution in an American city of about 22,000 people. Facebook commenters called for the city to be bombed.

For the people who actually live and work in the city, however, the suggestions weren’t just inaccurate — they were laughable.

Even Hamtramck’s mayor, Karen Majewski, who has Polish roots, was asked on CNN right after her election in November 2015 whether she was afraid of being in her own city — a question she told Teen Vogue was one of the strangest she'd ever gotten.

President Trump’s recent anti-immigrant rhetoric, and his executive order banning refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S., directly impact Hamtramck. About 20 percent of the city’s residents, for example, are from Yemen. The city has been subject to a narrative full of inaccuracies, but the real story is just how quintessentially American it is. It has maintained an ongoing legacy as a place that offers refuge to people from all over the world for over 100 years, first as a Polish enclave, and more recently as a burgeoning home to Muslims — the very people being branded by Trump as somehow outside of the construct of what it means to be American.

On Jan. 29, the city’s residents came together to stand in solidarity with one another in light of the executive order.

Salah Hadwan, a Yemeni-American who grew up in Hamtramck, helped organize the rally attended by around 1,000 people, amid distressing news of his own family members being turned away as they made their way to the U.S. from Yemen.

“We’re undoing the past 240 years and going in the wrong direction as a nation, honestly, but at the same time I'm not trying to be negative about what’s going on,” he told Teen Vogue. “I'm hoping for the best, but expecting the worst.”

Claire Nowak-Boyd, an urban planner who lives in the area, attended the protest with a sign that read “Granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, I say never again.”

Nowak-Boyd is scared for her community, she told Teen Vogue. “I’m most worried about my neighbors and their lives, but specifically for the future of Hamtramck itself. If we stem the flow of people who made this their home and revitalized it, what is it going to look like?”