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Obama's aunt battles deportation order in Boston court

E-mail|Link|Comments () February 4, 2010 04:44 PM

By Brian R. Ballou, Globe Staff

An immigration hearing that could lead to the deportation of President Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, ended today without a decision being issued.

Zeituni Onyango

Onyango has been living in Boston and has been under a deportation order since 2004 when her request for asylum was denied by a US Immigration Court judge.

She appealed that order in a closed-door hearing at the John F. Kennedy Building in downtown Boston, testifying for about three hours today.

Onyango, who leaned on a cane as she moved around the building, did not speak with reporters. Neither her attorney, Margaret Wong, nor Wong's spokeswoman, Amy Cohn, would discuss her testimony.

Wong said the president has not submitted any letter on behalf of his aunt.

At the White House today, spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama is staying out of the matter. Obama learned about his aunt's legal plight in 2008 during his campaign, Gibbs said.

"We said then and we would continue to say that everybody in this country should and must follow the law,'' he said, according to a transcript supplied by the White House. "We have not been involved at all in that hearing, and we'll let the law play out as it should.''

The aunt's legal team said they were calling two medical doctors as witnesses. They identified the doctors as Dr. David Stone and Dr. Robert Weiss. Stone, they said, is Onyango's personal physician. They declined to identify Weiss's medical specialty or hospital affiliation.

"The doctors are here in relation to her medical condition, but that's not every aspect of the case,'' Cohn said.

Onyango is a half-sister of the president's late father, Barack Obama Sr., who was absent most of Obama's life and who died in a car accident in 1982. The president met his aunt during a trip to Kenya in 1988 and included her in his 1995 memoir, "Dreams from My Father."

The Globe has reported on her immigration history.

Judge Leonard Shapiro ordered Onyango's defense team and the federal government to submit written closing arguments and set the next court date for May 25. However, the judge could issue a ruing before then, attorneys said today.