Obama’s Kenyan aunt blames system for allowing her to defy deportation order

NEW YORK - US President Barack Obama’s Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, has blamed the American system for helping her to defy a deportation order twice.

Onyango was granted asylum by a U.S. immigration judge in May.

Onyango, 58, the half sister of Obama’s father, had twice been rejected for asylum when she was exposed for living in a Boston housing project during the 2008 presidential campaign, the New York Post and the Boston Globe reports.

Onyango argued she should not be blamed for reaping the benefits of public housing.

“I didn’t take advantage of the system. The system took advantage of me,” she told WBZ-TV Monday.

She added she had been living in a homeless shelter for two years before she was assigned to public housing.

“I don’t mind. You can take that house. I can be on the streets with the homeless people. I didn’t ask for it. They gave it to me. Ask your system. I didn’t create it or vote for it. Go ask your system,” Onyango, who came to the U.S. in 2000, said.

She said that she came to America with the intention of returning to Kenya, but said she fell ill and could not afford the trip home.

She suffers from the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Her first request for asylum was denied in 2004. In May, she was granted asylum by Judge Leonard I. Shapiro, who said the publicity surrounding her case raised the possibility she would be persecuted if she was forced to return to Kenya. (ANI)