Watch Video
(Image source: Framingham Police Department)
BY NICHOLE CARTMELL
ANCHOR JASMINE BAILEY
Twenty years later, the deportation case of President Obama’s uncle is being reopened. WTOC explains.
“President Obama's uncle is getting a new deportation hearing after an appeals board ordered the agency running the U.S. immigration court system to review his case.”
Onyango Obama, the half-brother of the president's late father, is from Kenya and has lived in the U.S. for decades. But his arrest for drunk driving in Framingham last year might not help Onyango’s case.
The Boston Globe explains, the board’s decision to reopen the case raised eyebrows among immigration lawyers. They say it’s difficult to persuade the immigration courts to reconsider a case that involves an arrest and a clear violation of a deportation order, last issued in 1992. An executive director of the Washington-based American Immigration Lawyers Association told The Boston Globe,
“With an outstanding order and a legally fuzzy plea, it’s pretty unusual for the board to reopen. It’s not unheard of, but it’s pretty unusual.’”
But Onyango’s relationship with President Obama might be working in his favor. Mstar News says special treatment may have been given to him even though the President wasn't really close to his paternal side. A spokesperson for Federation for American Immigration Reform said...
“He would seem to fit the criteria of someone we would want to remove … And yet even in this case the system bends to his will and he gets another hearing.”
The Associated Press says the president’s aunt won the right to stay in the United States in 2010 after an earlier deportation order.