Obama’s aunt testifies at her second asylum hearing

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President Obama’s African aunt testified on her own behalf at a closed hearing Thursday in U.S. Immigration Court, making another bid of asylum based on what her lawyer said includes medical reasons.

Amy Cohn, a spokeswoman for her lawyer, said Kenya native Zeituni Onyango took the stand for about 2 1/2 hours. Cohn, a spokeswoman for attorney Margaret Wong, said two doctors also will testify at the hearing in Boston.

The 57-year-old Onyango arrived in a wheelchair Thursday, a cane across her lap. In an interview in November with the Associated Press, she said she is disabled and learning to walk again after being paralyzed from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.

It was not immediately clear when Judge Leonard Shapiro would rule. Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said the judge could issue a decision Thursday after the hearing, could continue the hearing and hear additional testimony on another date, or could issue a decision later.

[Updated at 12:50 p.m.: The hearing ended Thursday afternoon without an immediate decision on Onyango’s request for asylum.]

Onyango, the half-sister of Obama’s late father, moved to the United States in 2000. Her first asylum request 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.

Her status as an illegal immigrant was revealed just days before Obama was elected in November 2008. Obama has said he didn’t know his aunt was living in the country illegally and that immigration law should be followed.

-- Associated Press