Speaking up for Ibrahim

October 6. 2009
Our Opinion

The organization Citizens for Ibrahim is collecting signatures for a petition that asks President Barack Obama, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric Holder to drop deportation proceedings against Ibrahim Parlak.

The group first said it hoped to collect 1,000 names in 100 days. But that was too easy. It got that many names in the first week. So it has upped the target to 2,000 names. We think the new goal, too, will be readily achieved. To sign, go to the Web site www.freeibrahim.com.

Word of Parlak's dilemma has spread far and wide. The federal government once gave Parlak asylum after he was imprisoned and tortured in Turkey for separatist activities. But in the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been bent on deporting him. Most recently, he lost an appeal to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and is contemplating his next move. Among Parlak's many friends are U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, and U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. They are sponsoring federal legislation to grant Parlak permanent residency. The fact the bill is pending is keeping him safe for now. But the best solution would be an executive decision to call off this disproportionate war on Parlak.

The Harbert restaurateur also has friends who want to write personal letters on his behalf in addition to signing the Internet petition. We have heard from a number of them, requesting that we print mailing addresses. We are doing that today.

It might seem that letters and a petition wouldn't change the minds of such high-powered officials. Why should they care about one man, working hard at his business, raising his family, hoping for a future in the country he has grown to love?

The reason is clear to us: Anyone with so many people willing to stand up for him, to speak on his behalf, deserves their attention. If President Obama, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Napolitano do take note of the injustice that has been dealt Ibrahim Parlak, then they will see the rightness of dropping the deportation proceedings.

Torture on homefront cries out for justice

August 26, 2009
BY CAROL MARIN Sun-Times Columnist

The feds can't – just yet – deport Michigan restaurateur Ibrahim Parlak to his native Turkey. But they are frighteningly closer.

And the irony screams out.

On Monday, the same day Eric Holder, President Obama's attorney general, announced he would appoint a special counsel to investigate whether torture was used by the CIA to extract confessions from foreign suspects, a U.S. appeals court at the behest of the U.S. government ruled that it didn't have a problem sending Parlak back to the country where he was tortured – imprisoned for 17 months, shocked with electrodes, hung by his arms and sexually violated.

A Turkish Kurd, Parlak was granted political asylum in 1992. It was before our government got cozier with Turkey, before it re-classified some of the Kurdish separatist movement as "terrorist" and before the attacks of Sept. 11. With 9/11, Ibrahim Parlak's horror began anew.

Suddenly he looked different to the newly created Department of Homeland Security and to the Justice Department's Immigration courts. Instead of seeing a hard-working, tax-paying Chamber of Commerce member who ran Cafe Gulistan, a small Middle Eastern restaurant in the resort town of Harbert, Mich., the feds now saw an international menace.

In 2004, the FBI grabbed Parlak and locked him up.

If it hadn't been for a volunteer team of lawyers, including a Reagan-appointed former U.S. attorney, a former FBI anti-terrorism legal adviser and the bipartisan intervention of Michigan's Sen. Carl Levin, a liberal Democrat, and Rep. Fred Upton, a conservative Republican, Parlak would still be in jail.

Thanks to them, this 47-year-old father of a 12-year-old girl is temporarily free. But just barely.

The newest outrage is the 2-1 decision issued by Cincinnati's 6th Circuit Court of Appeals on the same day Holder launched his torture inquiry.

The majority opinion was issued by two Bush appointees put on the bench after 9/11. Judge Julia Smith Gibbons and Judge Jeffrey Sutton upheld the Justice Department's Immigration courts ruling that Parlak failed to disclose his relationship to the now-labeled terrorist organization even though he was never proven to be a member.

Let's remember something about our immigration courts. They are not independent. They work for whoever is the attorney general. And the past rulings against Parlak came under two now-controversial Bush appointees, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales.

The fairness of immigration rulings has been ripped by none other than Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of the nation's most brilliant judges. By September of 2005, Posner noted "a staggering 40 percent of the 136 petitions" had been reversed due to, according to one ruling, a willingness to ignore "the most basic of facts."

Echoing Posner now is the dissenting judge on the Parlak appeal. Judge Boyce F. Martin, a Carter appointee, writes with both clarity and conviction, arguing the government's "awesome power was used here to railroad a man out of our country."

Like a surgeon, Martin dissects the Justice Department's immigration courts and the majority opinion of his own colleagues, and ends by saying, "I remain hopeful, nevertheless, that this case is but a sad remnant of an era of paranoid, overzealous, error-riddled and misguided anti-terrorism and immigration enforcement that has now gone by the wayside. It is just a shame that, even if my hope proves true, it is too late for Ibrahim Parlak."

Parlak's legal team will appeal.

Meanwhile, Holder, like Ashcroft and Gonzales before him, is the new boss of the immigration courts.

As he investigates questions of U.S. torture abroad, here's hoping Holder examines the ongoing domestic legal torture of Ibrahim Parlak.

Parlak speaks out at rally on court's deportation decision

WSBT-TV Report
This story was originally posted at 6:57 p.m. Aug. 30, 2009.

A rally was held in Berrien County Sunday in support of Ibrahim Parlak. Just last week, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of deporting Parlak to his native Turkey, citing his past ties to a terror group.

Now, Parlak's supporters are talking strategy following the court decision. They gathered on Red Arrow Highway at the Harbert, Mich., restaurant Parlak has operated for years.

It's been a 10-year battle and Parlak's attorneys have a race against time to keep him in the United States. One option is to file a petition of review with the entire 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati or take the case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Parlak spoke to WSBT for the first time since the court's decision. He says support keeps him going.

"That's what makes this fight more meaningful." Parlak said. "It connects me and gives me strength to deal with this disappointment."

His supporters, meanwhile, helped place the focus on Parlak's commitment to America.

"You're hearing a strong belief in this country," said his attorney, John Smietanka. "He believes in this country and after all of this he's not giving up on it."

Congressman Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, attended Parlak's rally. He said that a private bill he proposed will ensure that Parlak is not deported before or during the appeals process. It was one of two such bills on his behalf.

The stopgap measures were introduced into the House of Representatives and Senate in February by Upton and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, respectively.

Parlak opened the Cafe Gulistan restaurant in 1994 in Harbert, and has been living a quiet, peaceful life since then.

But Parlak has been under the watchful eye of immigration officials since 2002, four years after he applied for naturalization status in 1998 and was denied citizenship by the Department of Homeland Security.

The trials of Ibrahim Parlak

OUR OPINION

It is deeply regrettable that the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati has issued a 2-1 opinion upholding the Department of Homeland Security's effort to deport Ibrahim Parlak.

The court, in its split decision, did not determine that Parlak intentionally misled authorities. Nor was there a suggestion that he has been anything but a model immigrant for 18 years. What the two-judge majority did say is that the DHS has legal grounds to deport Parlak – something the agency has been bent on doing for more than five years.

The third judge, Boyce F. Martin Jr., strongly dissented in a 15-page opinion, pointing out that an immigration judge's decision was likely based on evidence elicited by the use of torture. He described the record that had led to the Court of Appeals as "replete with error."

Parlak has operated Cafe Gulistan in Harbert for 15 years. A Kurd from southern Turkey, he was granted U.S. asylum after being convicted of separatism and imprisoned and tortured in Turkey.

The basis for DHS' effort – undertaken after the 9/11 attack and more than a decade after Parlak sought permanent residency – is that he falsified his application by stating that he had not been convicted of a crime. Parlak wasn't fluent in English at the time and has maintained that no deception was intended.

In fact, Parlak's conviction, imprisonment and subsequent torture in Turkey were hardly a secret. They had been the basis of his request for asylum two years earlier –  also a point that Judge Martin noted in his dissent.

The appeals court majority decision does not dispute any of that; it says only that intent to deceive isn't required for a deportation to proceed.

Once again, we are taken aback by how little justification DHS has needed to spur its pursuit of one gentle, decent man. That effort has included revocation of his work permit (it was returned after intervention by U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.) and incarceration for 10 months (he was freed by judicial order).

Parlak has friends and neighbors who will speak for him. He has an American family. He has made a life for himself in this country.

Indeed, it is the support of people throughout the Michiana region that has enabled Parlak to withstand DHS' relentless effort to separate him from the adopted country he loves – in the words of Judge Martin, to "railroad a man out of our country."

What now?

Levin and U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, both introduced legislation three years ago (and since reintroduced it twice) to grant Parlak permanent residency. The pending bills are keeping DHS from sending Parlak back to Turkey.

Parlak could appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Martin's remedy would have been to remand the case to a different immigration judge. That could be the Supreme Court's remedy as well.

Parlak has conducted himself as an exemplary American for nearly two decades. Whatever it takes, he should be allowed to become an American in the eyes of the law. What is happening to him is just plain wrong. This is not a country where it should go on any longer.

The best possible conclusion would be for the Justice Department, under Attorney General Eric Holder, to render unnecessary either an act of Congress or an appeal to the Supreme Court. Holder should acknowledge the disturbing disproportionality of DHS' past pursuit of Parlak and drop the case.

Parlak is no threat to the United States. He has made a new life in this country, raised a family here and earned the respect of his neighbors. It is past time for him to become Citizen Parlak.