I’m writing to ask for your help.
Those of you who have been to SE Michigan may have come across bumper stickers that say “Ibrahim for Citizen”. These bumper stickers are part of a campaign that has been going on for years to convince the Department of Homeland Security to give up on trying to deport Ibrahim Parlak, an asylee from Turkey who has become a leading member of his community.
Please grant me a few minutes to tell you why this matters and why you should go and sign the petition here for Ibrahim to be allowed to remain with his family in the United States.
Ibrahim is an ethnic Kurd from Southeast Turkey who was politically active in his youth, and was granted political asylum in the United States based on a well-founded fear of persecution for his involvement in a Kurdish political movement. He is alleged (not proven) to have been a member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in the 1980’s. He was arrested and tortured by the Turkish government when he tried to cross from Syria into Turkey, as he was assumed to have been in contact with the Syrian Kurdish political movement. In 1997, years after he had been granted asylum and under pressure from the Turkish government, the US designated the PKK a “terrorist” organization. In 2007, Parlak was declared retroactively deportable because of his alleged political association, and the vast and blind wheels of bureaucracy began to turn. The absurdity of the whole process was documented in The Wasteful Case Against Ibrahim Parlak in the New Yorker in October of this year, and has only gotten more bizarre since that time.
Ibrahim started as a dishwasher, married and started a family here, and eventually opened his own restaurant, Cafe Gulistan. He has become an integral part of his community, so much so that hundreds of residents protested DHS for trying to deport him.
A quarter century after granting Ibrahim asylum, the US government is now arming and providing close air support to the very people the Department of Homeland Security is accusing Ibrahim of being associated with — the YPG is the Syrian counterpart of the PKK. Those of you who follow the conflict in Turkey will recognize that the Syrian Kurds heroically defended the town of Kobane against ISIL, as the Turkish government looked on and did nothing, hoping that the ISIL killers would eliminate the Syrian Kurds once and for all. The international community could not stand by and watch. A year ago, President Obama ordered US warplanes to come to Kobane’s defense. The Kurds did their part. They fought and they fought hard. They not only pushed ISIL out of Kobane, but last Saturday, they took a dam on the Euphrates river only 30 kilometers from the ISIL capital of Raqqah.
So let me be clear: The Department of Homeland Security is trying to deport a good man who created jobs for his community, raised his US citizen daughter, and is by all accounts a valued member of his adopted community here… for once having been a member of the strongest ally we have in the fight against ISIL.
Yes, the PKK/YPG is a leftist socialist political movement. But this is not a political issue. Please if you respond to the petition (or if you’re a Republican reading this), be respectful, because the effort to keep Ibrahim here is bipartisan and we gain nothing by pissing off conservatives. People across the political spectrum are outraged at this attempt to deport him. From the New Yorker:
Martin Dzuris, an ardent George W. Bush supporter at the time, created a Web site and oversaw a letter-writing campaign. Anne Buckleitner, a former counsel to the F.B.I., joined the legal team. John Smietanka, the former United States Attorney for Western Michigan, who was appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, did as well. After ten months, U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn ordered Parlak’s release, saying he had “lived an exemplary life in the United States. … He has been a model immigrant vigorously asserting his right to remain in the United States. He is not a threat to anyone nor a risk of flight.”
He’s not out of the woods yet. DHS in typical sleazy fashion attempted to deport him over Christmas when they thought nobody would notice. Well, people did notice. At this point, the only sure way to save him is through Congressional action, or by appealing directly to President Obama. Individual immigration bills are not that rare; but they are incredibly rare for a Middle Eastern immigrant falsely accused of “terrorism”. Prosecutorial discretion should certainly apply in this case.
Ibrahim is a person who embodies all that is right about our instinct to take in refugees — an immigrant who fled persecution and is grateful to be here, who became as American as the rest of us, who has lived a full and productive life, has a family, and who is exactly the sort of person we want among us. I am only one of thousands who have come to know him over the years and I want to ask your help in granting him the chance to remain here with his family.
Please sign the petition here.
Thank you.