DETROIT -- Republican Donald Trump won the presidential vote in the cities of Dearborn and Dearborn Heights in Tuesday's election after the former president courted the votes of Arab American and Muslim communities in Metro Detroit.

Trump won Dearborn, the nation’s largest Arab-majority city, by about 6 percentage points over Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, by a margin of 42.5% to 36%. Green Party nominee Jill Stein, who selected a Palestinian American running mate, pulled over 18% of the vote in Dearborn, according to unofficial results.

In Dearborn Heights, Trump secured 44% of the vote to Harris' 38%. Stein pulled about 15% of the vote in Dearborn Heights, where the mayor, Bill Bazzi, endorsed Trump last month. Bazzi spoke at Trump campaign rallies across the state in the final days of the election.

Residents in the communities reported receiving a tsunami of texts, mailers, emails, TV and billboard ads in the final days of the campaign. Trump campaigned in Dearborn last week, declaring that peace in the Middle East can and should be achieved.

There are people in the U.S. and the Middle East "that aren't doing their job," Trump said during a stop at the Great Commoner, a cafe on Michigan Avenue in west Dearborn.

"You’re going to have peace in the Middle East," he said at another point. "And they should have in the Middle East, but not with the clowns you have in the Middle East."

The former president didn’t respond to a question on whether he thought what was happening in Gaza was a genocide — a claim by Palestinian Americans and others that is rejected by many Jewish Americans and Israeli officials.

Last month, Trump visited Hamtramck and campaigned with the city's mayor, Amer Ghalib, who is Muslim and had endorsed the former president. Trump at that time told reporters that Biden was trying to hold back Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel. “He probably should be doing the opposite,” Trump said.

For months, Arab American voters have complained that Democratic President Joe Biden and Harris hadn't done enough to end the war in the Middle East or suspend arms shipments to Israel.

In the February Democratic primary in Michigan, 101,623 ballots were cast for "uncommitted" in protest of Biden’s support of Israel in the ongoing conflict, many of them cast in Muslim-heavy cities including Dearborn, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck. Biden ended his bid for reelection on July 21, leading to Democrats nominating Vice President Kamala Harris for president.

But Uncommitted leaders from Michigan had refused to endorse Harris this fall, but pledged to mobilize their supporters against Trump, whose return to the White House they said would quash pro-Palestinian voices and "accelerate" killings in Gaza.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American member of Congress, last week labeled Trump "a proud Islamophobe" and "serial liar who doesn't stand for peace." Tlaib, a fierce critic of Israel, hasn't endorsed Harris this fall. Her district includes both Dearborn and Dearborn Heights.

"The reality is that the Biden admin’s unconditional support for genocide is what got us here," Tlaib wrote in a social media post. "This should be a wake-up call for those who continue to support genocide. This election didn't have to be close."

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, on Wednesday called on Democrats to learn lessons from Harris' loss of support among Muslims and other voters opposed to the Gaza war and urged Trump to "prioritize fulfilling his campaign pledge to pursue peace abroad, including an end to Israel’s war on Gaza."

"The vice president's failure to lay out any plan to end that genocide, such as suspending weapons to Israel, combined with her refusal to let any Palestinian-American speak at the DNC and her embrace of the war criminal enthusiast Liz Cheney, made matters worse," CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said in a statement.

"Rather than listening to the clear majority of American who support both a ceasefire and a suspension of weapons to Israel, Vice President Harris only struck a slightly more sympathetic tone toward Palestinians while sticking with the substance of President Biden's disastrous stance. This led to an unprecedented shift of support from Muslim, Arab, and other communities who traditionally vote for Democratic presidents."

In the closely watched Senate race, Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Holly won Dearborn over Republican Mike Rogers by a margin of 42.5% to 36%, and Dearborn Heights by a margin of 42% to 41%, according to unofficial returns.

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(Staff writer Craig Mauger contributed.)

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