Officials released President Obama's uncle from Plymouth County jail yesterday after holding him for more than two weeks on an immigration detainer for violating an order to return to his native Kenya in 1992. US officials refused to disclose any other information. Although the ICE website confirmed it, Brian P. Hale, an ICE spokesman, said he would not comment on the case because privacy laws and the agency's policies prohibit it. Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors tougher limits on immigration, said the immigration agency should be more transparent, especially in a case involving a relative of the president. She said the public deserves to know the circumstances of Obama's release, since he violated a deportation order and is accused of drunken driving. In a criminal court, she said, that would be public information. "This whole nonsense about privacy is a policy,'' Vaughan said. "It's not the law. It's a choice that [the immigration agency] is making. I think it's very cowardly on [the agency's] part, to be honest. Their behavior shows that they don't want to be accountable to anybody.'' YUP.
This uncle yet another of the president's relatives to fall afoul of immigration laws & get away with it - at least so far. Onyango Obama's younger sister, Zeituni Onyango, violated a deportation order and lived quietly in Boston public housing until days before her nephew's historic election in 2008, when her illegal status was leaked to the media. Based in part on the leak, and her increased exposure, a Boston immigration judge granted her asylum last year.
Laws are for little people, unless they have relatives in high office.