Will U.S. Deport Kurdish Activist Ibrahim Parlak Back to Turkey Where He Was Jailed & Tortured?

We turn now to a case of Michigan resident Ibrahim Parlak, who faces imminent deportation in an asylum case that stretches back more than 20 years. Parlak is a Kurdish man who came to the United States in 1990 fleeing persecution in his native country of Turkey, where he’d been arrested and tortured for his affiliations with the political arm of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. Once Parlak reached the United States, he was granted political asylum. A year later, he was granted permanent residence. But all this changed in the years following 2001, when the FBI began to review old asylum files. In 2004, Parlak was arrested and threatened with deportation. But much to the surprise of the Department of Homeland Security, the community around him in Harbert, Michigan, rose to his defense. People built websites, organized letter-writing campaigns, held vigils and made so much noise that the agency released him. But now, his immigration case has suddenly come up again. The Department of Homeland Security has once again threatened Parlak with deportation and has ordered him to apply for residency to some other country. He fears he’ll be returned to Turkey, where the increasing crackdown on Kurdish communities has killed hundreds and displaced 200,000 from their homes. To talk more about the case, we’re joined in Chicago by Ibrahim Parlak, his daughter Livia, and their lawyer, Rob Carpenter.

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