Thread: Obama's aunt gives conflicting comments about Kenyan return

Obama's aunt gives conflicting comments about Kenyan return
By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | June 4, 2009

Zeituni Onyango, the president's aunt who is facing deportation from the United States, said yesterday that she planned to return to her native Kenya as soon as last night.

Then, she reversed herself, and said she was not going.

It was just the latest turn for the enigmatic Onyango, who catapulted from obscurity into the international spotlight last year just before the presidential election when news reports revealed that she was an illegal immigrant living in Boston public housing.

Onyango, who recently turned 57, said she has moved out of her public housing apartment and is in an undisclosed location nearby. Regardless of her travel plans, she said she plans to be in Boston for her next immigration hearing, on Feb. 4.

"I'll be there, God willing," she said yesterday in a phone interview. "I don't know, I'm not a soothsayer. I leave everything to God."

Earlier yesterdaya relative in Kenya told a group of visiting American journalists that Onyango is returning to that country soon. The relative did not elaborate, but the statements irked Onyango, who would not give a clear answer to the question.

"How would she know?" Onyango asked. "I don't want anybody to know whether I'm going to hell or heaven."

David Santos - a spokesman for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which could grant Onyango permission to travel while her case is pending - declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy rules.

Onyango's lawyer, Margaret Wong, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer last month that Onyango was seeking permanent residency. Wong was unavailable for comment yesterday. Onyango had lived with relatives in Cleveland after her immigration status was revealed.

But yesterday, the deeply religious Onyango was cryptic about her future. She said "America is my home," but also said her work here was "finished."

"I came here to pray for my nephew; I came here to bless my nephew," she said. "That's the job I've done, and I have finished my job."

She also had words of praise for President George W. Bush for not having her immediately deported last year when her story came to light. "He's my number one guy," she said of Bush.

Onyango, a former computer programmer at Kenya Breweries whom President Obama called Auntie Zeituni in one of his books, came to the United States in 2000 seeking a better life but lost several attempts to gain legal residency.

She was most recently ordered deported in 2004 but did not leave.

After the presidential election, she went to court to reopen her case, and in April, immigration judge Leonard Shapiro in Boston granted her a 10-month extension to fight it.

Both at home and in court, Onyango has been difficult to pin down.

One cold day this year, she cut a frail, solitary figure in a black coat, who struggled to climb the stairs to her former apartment in Boston. Soon afterward, she was the flamboyant center of attention in federal court, in a herringbone coat and brassy wig.

She says she is a strong, private and independent woman who volunteered for years in her community and is a mother of four children and grandmother to three. Former neighbors said that Onyango never bragged about being Obama's aunt.

She also suffers from health problems: A spokesman for her lawyer has said she is battling a neurological condition and back problems that require her to walk with a cane.

"I'm an ordinary, simple woman who is just trying to survive," Onyango said.

She can also be sharp and quick witted in conversation, acknowledging with a chuckle during yesterday's interview that she can be "temperamental."

She said she wants to write a book about her brother, Barack Obama Sr., who has been portrayed as a brilliant but troubled man who rose from humble beginnings to study at Harvard, but who was rarely in the president's life. Obama Sr. died in a car crash in 1982.

Onyango said her brother helped her to get out of an abusive marriage when she was jobless and destitute, bought her first pair of shoes, and helped her to become the first girl in the family to see the inside of a classroom door.

www.boston.com

What in the hell is going on with these people?

Her "work" here on behalf of obama is finished? Her "job" here is done? All of a sudden it's time for her to pack up and leave the country after 9 years of fighting tooth and claw to stay here, vowing she wouldn't be forced to return?

With all that we know about these individuals and their dirty connections so far, more being revealed every day.......sorry, something is up and it sounds more like she's being gotten out jurisdictional reach than it does anything else.

Are the rats running for their holes?

David Santos - a spokesman for the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which could grant Onyango permission to travel while her case is pending - declined to comment on the matter, citing privacy rules.

If she goes to Kenya she needs to REMAIN in Kenya! Wasn't she using the defense she wouldn't be safe there to remain in the US? So all of a sudden she can go? And precisely WHERE is the money coming from? THAT trip ain't cheap!!! Could it be coming from all the $ she saved living in subsidized housing?

What does the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services do? I mean in real life, not just in theory?

Sounds like someone who needs Social Security disability right away. Not eligible for citizenship.

This woman is a piece of work. She's had all this time to "write her book".

Dixie

Related

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-158310.html

Onyango sounds as narcistic as her nephew.