The Jersey City Independent "

Ibis, an Edison resident, called his brother’s office number – his cell was at home – but got no answer.

He tried to get into New York to find his brother but the bridges were closed. He looked for a boat to rent, frantically offering everything he had on him – more than $5000. (Ibis, who owns a gas station and repair shop, hadn’t gone to the bank to deposit his earnings.)

“Take whatever you want,” he recalls saying. “Get me across the river.”

But it was futile. He drove to the Hoboken train station, where tents were set up to treat the victims, he said.

“I was there the whole day searching in the crowd, going from tent to tent, checking the wounded,” Ibis told us in a telephone interview. His quiet voice is occasionally broken with the saddest sigh. “I was there all day, until about 8 or 9 pm.”

He finally went home, but couldn’t stay – everyone was crying, including his brother’s two-year-old son. He went back to the Hoboken train station to look for his brother. Three of his friends joined him. At the station a man Ibis believes to be a security guard told him the best thing to do is to come back in the morning.

“I just couldn’t go home,” he said. “I was sitting in the car I don’t know how long. I woke up with a flashlight and a knock on the window.”

It was a NJ Transit police officer. Ibis explained they were looking for his brother who worked at the Twin Towers. The officer asked for his paperwork and accused him of not having plates on his car. Ibis pointed out the temporary license plate on his car, which he had recently bought in New York.

“All of a sudden he said everybody out of the car,” Ibis said. “He said he’s going to search the car. He got real nervous – he was a young guy.”

That brief sad, sigh interrupts Ibis’ explanation. And then he continues.

More police showed up, with a bomb-sniffing dog.

“They started saying, ‘Where’s the bomb?’” Ibis said. “’Tell us where the bomb is.’”

Ibis explained to them: “Look this is who we are. We’re not terrorists. We have nothing to do with bombs.”

An officer became suspicious of a footrest in the back seat of his car.

“They kept yelling, ‘Where’s the bomb?’”

The officers opened the trunk. Ibis knew the panic would only get worse now. He kept a bee-bee gun in his briefcase in the trunk.

“I play with it like a kid,” he explains.

The officers ordered him to open the briefcase.

“I bent down to the trunk, I hear all those clicks,” he said. “Like five guns to my head. One of the officer’s hands are shaking on the gun and it’s right on my head.”

Ibis continued: “Slowly I lifted my hands up. [I told them,] ‘There’s a plastic gun, don’t shoot.’ That’s when everyone got crazy. They handcuffed us. They were yelling and screaming, calling us terrorists. They searched us, took our wallets, our cell phones. They saw the money in my pocket and got really suspicious. One after another asked – where are you hiding the bomb? They were treating us like we were terrorists.”

Ibis was arrested and thrown in a police car while everyone else was told they could go.

“All of a sudden the older security guard came,” he said. “We were right in front of the train station.”

He asked the officers what they were doing.

“[The security guard] started yelling because they refused to let me go,” said Ibis.

Finally he was uncuffed. He then sat on the police car, talking with one of the officers.

“He started apologizing,” Ibis said. “He said it was not a normal day, anything can happen and we looked suspicious.”

“I know it’s not a normal day,” Ibis replied. “It’s not a normal day for me either. It doesn’t give you any right to treat me like that. You treated me like a terrorist.”

The officer gave him three tickets for having a fictitious plate, improper parking and tinted windows.

Ibis decided not to file a complaint against the officers, thinking it was best just to forget about the whole incident.

In 2002, he applied for naturalization. In May 2003 he passed the last evaluation but was told he was still being investigated. Since 9/11, immigrants with names similar to wanted terrorists would be subjected to “name checks,” he was told. The process would take no longer than a year.

But two years later his application was still stuck on pause. In the meantime, he got married in Turkey but couldn’t bring his wife to the U.S. After one year of marriage she finally joined him on a tourist visa.

On January 5, 2005 he e-mailed the FBI about his name check, explaining his situation – his brother’s death, his delayed citizenship and his new wife:

“[A]s you can imagine me and my family suffered enough because of the great loss of my brother … on top of everything now I am suffering again because of September 11th by waiting for my citizenship.
Please help me with this case because I cannot handle another loss, my wife is very desperate. So I am. I cannot live if I lose her. At this point I have two choices… either lose my marriage relation. Which I cannot handle or sell everything I have and leave this country. I don’t want to do either one. Because I love my wife and I love this country. Please please help me.”

On July 14 Ibis received this reply from the FBI National Name Check chief:

“The FBI completed a name check for you on July 12, 2005, and the results were forwarded to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services…”

But his citizenship application still didn’t move forward. Immigration claimed they didn’t have anything from the FBI on file, Ibis said.

All Ibis can think of for the indefinite delay is his arrest – his only arrest — on 9/11. He has contacted the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee for legal help and is waiting for their response.

But Ibis isn’t just up against the prejudice seemingly entrenched in Immigration’s red tape — he and his family endure racist accusations on a day-to-day basis. His parents were called “fucking terrorists” while leaving a grocery store in Clifton. At work, during arguments with customers, Ibis said, “the first thing people call you is a fucking terrorist.”

“It’s getting harder and harder to live here,” he said. “I’m thinking of moving back [to Turkey.]”

Ibis actually brought his brother’s remains to Turkey to be buried.

“If we bury him here then we’re going to have something keep us here,” he explained. “Then the rest of [my family’s] generations are going to be stuck here. Look at what’s going on outside. It’s going to get worse. It’s so tough to live here as a Muslim.”

On the Web: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, New Jersey