**President Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt has appeared at a court hearing in Boston that will decide whether she will be deported from the US.**It is the second asylum hearing for Zeituni Onyango, the half-sister of Mr Obama’s father. Her first asylum application was rejected in 2004.
She was ordered to be deported but did not leave the country, continuing to live in public housing in Boston.
Her immigration status became an issue during Mr Obama’s election campaign.
He said at the time that he had not known his aunt had been living in the US illegally.
Ms Onyango arrived at the court in a wheelchair and with a walking stick across her lap.
Her lawyer, Margaret Wong, said Ms Onyango was applying for asylum for medical and other reasons, according to the Associated Press news agency.
‘Proud woman’
Ms Wong said two doctors as well as Ms Onyango herself were expected to testify during the hearing, which would be closed to the public.
The US president first met his father’s side of the family when he travelled to Africa more than 20 years ago.
Describing the visit in his memoir, he talks of Ms Onyango, whom he calls Auntie Zeituni, as a proud woman.
Ms Onyango visited the family in Chicago on a tourist visa at Mr Obama’s invitation about 10 years ago, stopping to visit friends on the east coast before returning to Kenya.
In 2004 she attended Mr Obama’s swearing-in to the US Senate, but campaign officials say he did not help get her a tourist visa.