This story must be about Obama's Aunt Zeituni Onyango

Arlington volunteer wins asylum for Kenyan woman
Sun Apr 19, 2009, 06:30 AM EDT

Arlington, Mass. - The high-tech patent disputes that lawyer Jeffrey C. O’Neill, an Arlington resident, works on involve a lot of money — but are far from life or death situations. But when the associate with Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C. in Boston volunteered as a pro bono lawyer with the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project, that is what his first case potentially involved.

His client was a Kenyan woman who was applying for political asylum in the United States. She feared persecution in Kenya for her membership in Orange Democratic Movement party (ODM), her Kalenjin ethnicity, and her brother’s active involvement in the ODM. In the aftermath of the murderous violence following the presidential election, the woman’s village was burned down and taken over by the rival Kikuyu.

O’Neill, along with Eric Rutt, a summer associate at the firm, had volunteered for PAIR, the main provider of pro bono legal services to low-income asylum-seekers in Massachusetts. After a training session, they were assigned to represent the woman.

It’s not easy to get asylum. The applicant has to prove he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country. An asylum officer interviews the applicant to determine whether the applicant meets the standards for asylum and to evaluate the credibility of the applicant’s claims. O’Neill and Rutt spent many hours preparing the client’s affidavit, finding news articles to corroborate the client’s story, and preparing the client for the asylum interview.

The firm was supportive. “Wolf Greenfield is happy when people do pro bono work,â€