When Ibraham Parlak was arrested by Homeland Security in July of 2004 as a Kurdish terrorist who needed to be thrown out of the country, the first Chicago journalist to write about his plight was Mike Sneed. I had something to do with that. Parlak ran a restaurant on the Red Arrow Highway in southwest Michigan and was a popular member of the Harbor Country community. But his application to become a naturalized American set off an alarm. He’d once been arrested back in Turkey as a member of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which in 1997—six years after he came to America—the U.S. designated a terrorist organization. A friend who knew Parlak well called me crying. He’d just been scooped up and thrown in jail and he could be shipped off at any time to Turkey. Parlak had a wife, a family, a business—he was no enemy of America! Something had to be done.
She went on to say:
Mysteriously, bank after bank has told him to take his business elsewhere. Even when all he seeks to do is DEPOSIT money.
Do they explain?
“No,” he replies. “Never.”
Homeland Security has ordered Ibrahim to apply for residency to some other country.
