State Law Permits Obama’s Aunt to Live in South Boston

By Joshua Schubert

SOUTH BOSTON – For years, Zeituni Onyango, one of President-elect Barack Obama’s aunts from Kenya, lived in a Flaherty Street public housing facility, uninterrupted
by the media blitz that the release of her immigration stats sparked.

Obama was unaware of Onyango’s illegal status, his campaign staff said in a statement.

Immigrants in Massachusetts are allowed to keep their immigration status private under a 1977 federal consent decree.

The legal status of immigrants seeking protection in the United States is confidential and can only be released to police or elected officials upon federal permission, according to a 1995 asylum office memo.

“It appears that the Department of Homeland Security rules were likely violated when confidential materials were released for partisan purposes,” said Michael A. Olivas, an immigration law professor at the University of Houston.

The confidentiality rules were written to protect the immigrants’ safety.

Releasing information “can put any such asylee at risk---especially if they are identified and well-known,” Olivas said.

The Massachusetts decree is not uncommon and other states have similar laws, said Peter Spiro, author and immigration law professor at Temple University.

“Many states extend various benefits to undocumented aliens, but usually on their own initiative and not at the behest of the federal government,” Spiro said.

Spiro was initially “surprised that such a consent decree exists,” being as recent measures, including the 1996 Welfare Reform Act, have limited the rights of illegal immigrants.

Since Obama’s victory last Tuesday, Onyango in staying with family in Ohio, where she hired local immigration lawyer Margaret Wong.

Some say that her move will endanger her chances of remaining in the country.

“If this is so, the matter [of the Massachusetts decree] is moot,” said Sheldon Goldman, professor of constitutional law at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

But Olivas said that the courts may be sympathetic to Onyango’s case, based on the leak.

“These confidentiality rules are approved government practice and are taken seriously by courts," Olivas said.

The “regulations safeguard information that, if disclosed publicly, could subject the claimant to retaliatory measures,” according to the asylum memo.