Obama's 'Auntie Zeituni' will not leave the US, says lawyer

New York, 10 : Barack Obama's "Auntie Zeituni" plans to fight a deportation order so that she can stay in the United States, according to her lawyer.

Zeituni Onyango, who is affectionately described in Obama's autobiography "Dreams from My Father", was found by The Times last week living in a South Boston council flat, reports The Telegraph.

She is now staying with a clergyman cousin in Cleveland, Ohio, but Obama has not made contact with her since the story broke, Mike Rogers, her spokesman, said. Onyango, 56, the half-sister of Obama's father, is recalled in his best selling memoir as the first Kenyan relative to greet him on his first trip to his father's homeland in 1988. She reportedly moved to the United States on a temporary visa in 2000 to join a son who had been accepted at a college in Boston. A judge turned down her application for asylum in 2004.

Obama has said that he was last in touch with his aunt two years ago, when she told him she was in Boston. He insists he did not know she was living in the United States illegally.

Asked about her predicament, he suggested that she comply with the deportation order.

ANI