Thread: Obama's aunt to fight to stay in US

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APNewsBreak: Obama's aunt to fight to stay in US

By DENISE LAVOIE

BOSTON (AP) _ President-elect Obama's aunt intends to fight a deportation order and hopes to remain in the United States, her immigration lawyer said Friday.

The Associated Press found that Zeituni Onyango (zay-TUHN on-YANG-oh), 56, is staying with relatives in Cleveland after fleeing her public housing apartment in Boston. She had been living there five years.

Onyango, who is Obama's father's half-sister, was ordered to leave the country in 2004 by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from her native Kenya.

Cleveland attorney Margaret Wong told the AP on Friday she is exploring legal options and may file a motion to reopen Onyango's case or file an appeal for her to stay on humanitarian grounds. She would not discuss Onyango's reasons for seeking asylum in the United States.

"She will do whatever she can do to fight for the privilege to stay in America," she said.

Obama's campaign said previously he did not know about his aunt's status but believes she should obey the law. The campaign said it was returning $260 that Onyango had contributed in small increments to Obama's presidential bid over several months.

Wong, a prominent immigration attorney and frequent political contributor to candidates of both parties, said Onyango believes someone leaked information about her immigration status to try to hurt Obama's candidacy.

"She's upset that people could just hurt her like that ... use her to try to hurt Barack," Wong said.

"She had never asked Barack for help. She just doesn't want to hurt him," she said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it is investigating whether any laws or rules were broken in the disclosure that Obama's aunt was living in the United States illegally. The AP had reported Oct. 31 that she had been instructed to leave the country four years ago by an immigration judge who rejected her request for asylum from Kenya, which has been fractured by violence in recent years, including some two months of bloodshed that killed 1,500 people after December 2007.

Wong said she was contacted recently by Onyango's cousin — a clergyman in Cleveland whom Wong would not identify — and asked to represent her. She said Onyango fled Boston after the story broke last week and took a train to Cleveland to stay with her cousin.

The publicity around Obama's aunt's case could convince an immigration judge to rethink her asylum request, said Victor Cerda, the former director of Detention and Removal Operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She and her lawyers could argue her risk of harm in Kenya is even greater than before, because of the international attention brought to her case.

Onyango has been sickly since her immigration status became public, and Wong said she would not immediately make her available to speak to a reporter.

Obama was raised largely by his mother and her parents in Hawaii. He first met his father's side of the family when he traveled to Africa 20 years ago. He referred to Onyango as "Auntie Zeituni" when describing the trip in his memoir, saying she was "a proud woman."

Obama's campaign said he had seen her a few times since that meeting, beginning with a return trip to Kenya with his future wife, Michelle, in 1992. Onyango visited the family in Chicago on a tourist visa at Obama's invitation about nine years ago, the campaign said, stopping to visit friends on the East Coast before returning to Kenya.

She attended Obama's swearing-in to the U.S. Senate in January 2005, but campaign officials said Obama provided no assistance in getting her a tourist visa and doesn't know the details of her stay. The campaign said he last heard from her about two years ago when she called saying she was in Boston, but he did not see her there.

Onyango's former lawyer, Godson Anosike, of Cambridge, told the AP on Friday that he and Onyango shared their excitement when Obama was elected U.S. senator, but she never told him the two were family.

Anosike said when he gave Onyango the news in 2004 that the judge had rejected her request for asylum, she was disappointed.

"I guess she was trying to figure out what next to do, and she told me that if worse came to worse, she was going to leave ... she was thinking of returning to Kenya, that was my understanding," he said.

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leaked or not, the woman should have left in 2004 when she was first told to do so.
there was no asylum given and im betting there wont be this time either

Come on people.......... There is no frekin way she will lose!!!!

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has said it is investigating whether any laws or rules were broken in the disclosure that Obama's aunt was living in the United States illegally.

How about investigating WHERE she is hiding and DEPORTING her? I dont care if she is related to the pope, she was instructed to leave the country 4 years ago by an immigration judge and needs to be arrested by ICE and deported again. Maybe this time ICE should escort her to the plane to make sure she does leave.

Sure she will, she wants to stick around to get Obamnesty or a congressional order.

I'm telling you, she is not the only relative here illegally. She's not alone. Mark my word, the astranged/X husband and/or children are also here.

Dixie

She and her lawyers could argue her risk of harm in Kenya is even greater than before, because of the international attention brought to her case.

Horsecrap! She would probably be welcomed home with fanfare because she is related to Obama.

Here we go again, the new "Elvira"! Kenya is naming all kinds of stuff after Obama. She would be a celebrity in Kenya, but not near as much free stuff. WHO are these relatives???? A bunch more illegals???

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http://www.alipac.us/article3710.html

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hea ... 01296.html
73 comments so far


Obama's aunt staying in Cleveland, fighting deportation
By MARIA SACCHETTI
The Boston Globe
Nov. 7, 2008, 10:23PM

President-elect Barack Obama's aunt is with relatives in Cleveland and mulling her options to fight a deportation order, according to her immigration attorney.

Margaret W. Wong, a lawyer in Cleveland, issued a statement saying Zeituni Onyango did not wish to comment further.

The 56-year-old half-sister of Obama's late father had said she would speak to a reporter after the election, but instead declined to comment and left her apartment in the Boston Housing Authority for Ohio.

"Her wish is for this matter to remain private," Wong said in a statement. "She is in Cleveland with close family members resting and is under good care."

An immigration judge denied Onyango's application for political asylum and ordered her deported four years ago. But since then she has been living in federal and state-funded public housing in Boston.

Immigration lawyers have said Onyango might have several options to stay in this country, even if she were facing a deportation order. She could appeal to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement to allow her to stay while she tries to reopen her asylum case, for instance.

The circumstances of Onyango's asylum petition have not been released.

Onyango's immigration status, and her residency in public housing, generated controversy just before the presidential election.

Wong told The Associated Press Friday that Onyango was upset that news of her immigration status had been leaked to the news media because she believed it was intended to hurt Obama's candidacy.

But others questioned why she had been allowed to live there.

Illegal immigrants are ineligible for federal housing benefits, and Onyango had lived in federally subsidized housing until she transferred to state-funded housing this year for medical reasons.

State officials said a 1977 federal consent decree in Massachusetts prohibits them from denying illegal immigrants state-funded public housing.

As of Friday, Onyango was still a tenant in the West Broadway housing project, according to Bill McGonagle, deputy director of the Boston Housing Authority.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has asked its inspector general and Office of Professional Responsibility to investigate the leak because the overseeing Department of Homeland Security's policy is to maintain confidentiality of such cases.

Several neighbors, who declined to give their names, described Onyango this week as a slim, tall woman who recently had back surgery and was in the hospital for several weeks. They said she walked with a limp and needed help from neighborhood children to carry in her groceries.

Onyango often dispensed advice to her younger neighbors, such as urging them to lock the front door to prevent strangers from harming their children. They said she never mentioned that she was Obama's aunt.

Originally Posted by 93camaro

Come on people.......... There is no frekin way she will lose!!!!

That's a given. Any bets that it's Obama paying for the high priced lawyer she's got as well?


You watch. She'll also end uo with some position on the white house domestic staff too or some such crap.

This is going to be a serious case of the Obamas Go To Washington with half the damned tribe moving in to the presidential palace.