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Obama uncle faces hearing in fight against deportation
Lawyer Scott Bratton said he will ask the judge to grant residency because Obama has lived here for so many years.
Boston Globe
Maria Sacchetti
1/30/2013
Excerpt:
A Boston immigration judge has set a Dec. 3 hearing to determine if President Obama’s uncle, *Onyango *Obama, should be deported to his native Kenya 50 years after he first arrived in the *United States.
Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro set the date at a short preliminary hearing Wednesday. After*ward, Obama’s lawyer, Scott Bratton, said he will ask the judge to grant Obama legal residency, in part because he has lived here for so many years.
“Everybody wants to stay in America,’’ said Bratton, who is based in Cleveland. “Hopefully, on Dec. 3, the case will be over.’’
Obama, a 68-year-old liquor store manager, came to America at age 19 in 1963 to attend an elite boys’ school in Cambridge. He gained renown as a soccer star, but soon dropped out of school and was ordered deported several times, most recently in 1992.
But he never left and lived under the radar until Framingham police arrested him in August 2011 on drunken driving charges. Obama admitted to sufficient facts in the criminal case and was sentenced to a year’s probation, after which the case would be dismissed. Then, in November, the Board of Immigration Appeals reopened his immigration case, based in part on his assertion that his prior lawyer, now dead, was ineffective.
Wednesday, few in Shapiro’s packed courtroom noticed when the president’s uncle arrived dressed in a brown jacket and sneakers and took a seat in the front row. He waited for more than an hour with more than 30 immigrants from Pakistan, Guatemala, Uganda, their faces creased with tension over the threat of being deported.
As Obama watched, Shapiro gave one woman until May to leave the United States or face forcible deportation, similar to the kind of warning an immigration appeals board gave Obama himself in 1992.
“If you don’t leave then, you’ll be ordered to be deported,” Shapiro warned the woman, “and you don’t want to have that happen.”
......................................
View the complete article at:
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01...yWN/story.html
Lawyer Scott Bratton said he will ask the judge to grant residency because Obama has lived here for so many years.
Boston Globe
Maria Sacchetti
1/30/2013
Excerpt:
A Boston immigration judge has set a Dec. 3 hearing to determine if President Obama’s uncle, *Onyango *Obama, should be deported to his native Kenya 50 years after he first arrived in the *United States.
Immigration Judge Leonard I. Shapiro set the date at a short preliminary hearing Wednesday. After*ward, Obama’s lawyer, Scott Bratton, said he will ask the judge to grant Obama legal residency, in part because he has lived here for so many years.
“Everybody wants to stay in America,’’ said Bratton, who is based in Cleveland. “Hopefully, on Dec. 3, the case will be over.’’
Obama, a 68-year-old liquor store manager, came to America at age 19 in 1963 to attend an elite boys’ school in Cambridge. He gained renown as a soccer star, but soon dropped out of school and was ordered deported several times, most recently in 1992.
But he never left and lived under the radar until Framingham police arrested him in August 2011 on drunken driving charges. Obama admitted to sufficient facts in the criminal case and was sentenced to a year’s probation, after which the case would be dismissed. Then, in November, the Board of Immigration Appeals reopened his immigration case, based in part on his assertion that his prior lawyer, now dead, was ineffective.
Wednesday, few in Shapiro’s packed courtroom noticed when the president’s uncle arrived dressed in a brown jacket and sneakers and took a seat in the front row. He waited for more than an hour with more than 30 immigrants from Pakistan, Guatemala, Uganda, their faces creased with tension over the threat of being deported.
As Obama watched, Shapiro gave one woman until May to leave the United States or face forcible deportation, similar to the kind of warning an immigration appeals board gave Obama himself in 1992.
“If you don’t leave then, you’ll be ordered to be deported,” Shapiro warned the woman, “and you don’t want to have that happen.”
......................................
View the complete article at:
http://bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/01...yWN/story.html