Crickets Louder Than Obama as Aunt Faces Deportation

(This post originally appeared on WireTap Magazine)

I don’t wanna jump on the Barack bashing bandwagon, the trend since progressive activists stopped worrying about McCain winning and began scrambling back to the über-Left, and especially since I voted for the man (the personal becomes political when it comes to electing My First Black President), but President Obama’s attitude as his Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango, faces mounting pressure for her deportation threatens my hope for just immigration reform happening under his administration.

Just two weeks ago, the Americans for Legal Immigration (ALIPAC) filed a request with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the cold agency known as ICE) calling for Ms. Onyango’s arrest for violating deportation orders and demanding the President’s support on the matter. President Obama did not respond to their call but his silence in light of comments made at the end of last year about the case shows that he neither feels passionately about immigration reform nor does he feel its urgency. In an interview with Katie Couric, the Presidential hopeful stated about his dear “Auntie Zeituni,” as he referred to her in his memoir:

“If she is violating laws those laws have to be obeyed. We’re a nation of laws. Obviously that doesn’t lessen my concern for her, I haven’t been able to be in touch with her. But I’m a strong believer you have to obey the law.”

Laws need to be obeyed, huh? What about the fact that his Auntie Zeituni came here seeking asylum because Kenya’s politicians couldn’t obey their own laws, and as a result civil war broke out, forcing her to immigrate to the US?

And as President, and inheritor of Big Brother, he should be able to find her now, even if perhaps, he somehow couldn’t get a hold of her then. If the distance allows him to turn a blind eye, what does that mean for the thousands of immigrants who are being rounded up by ICE, waiting in detention centers or at home with ankle bracelets? And who, just like Ms. Onyango, need his help in the form of immediate immigration reform?

I don’t want to turn my back on My First Black President, but having solidarity with him means he needs to have solidarity with me and my community of immigrant people of color, and he could start by taking an Air Force One flight to Auntie Zetuni’s house in the projects of South Boston and find out what the hell is going on.

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Credit: Beatriz Herrera, a native of New York City and a lead organizer with the Women Workers Project at People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER), a multiracial grassroots organization based in San Francisco.