Obama's aunt may return to Kenya

"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.

At home and in court, she 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 and grandmother to three.

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.

Dante Ramos of the Globe staff contributed to this report from Kenya.