CLEVELAND — A U.S. immigration court has granted asylum to President Barack Obama’s African aunt, allowing her to stay in the country and setting her on the road to citizenship after years of legal wrangling, her attorneys announced Monday. The decision was made by a judge in U.S. Immigration Court in Boston and mailed out Friday.
People who seek asylum must show that they face persecution in their homeland on the basis of religion, race, nationality, political opinion or membership in a social group.
The lawyer for Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, said last year that Onyango first applied for asylum “due to violence in Kenya.”
Medical issues also could have played a role. In a November interview with The Associated Press, Onyango said she was disabled and was learning to walk again after being paralyzed from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.
“She really does give people hope,” Wong said. “Because if someone like her who was in the spotlight, in the limelight — and it was all negative — could make it in our land of the law, I think other people could, too.”
Onyango initially came to the U.S. in 2000 just for a visit. Her first request for political asylum in 2002 was rejected, and she was ordered deported in 2004. But she didn’t leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston.
