Zeituni Onyango came to the United States to apply for asylum from her native Kenya but was turned down and ordered to leave the country in 2004.
Four years later, she is still here, and her nephew is about to become president of the United States.
Onyango's family connection to President-elect Obama has thrown a spotlight on the estimated 560,000 illegal immigrants living in the United States in defiance of deportation orders.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has stepped up efforts to catch fugitive aliens, as they are known, and has about 100 "fugitive operations teams" around the country. In the past year, the teams have made 34,000 arrests, more than double the number two years ago.
Fugitive aliens include people who, like Obama's aunt, applied for asylum in the United States but were rejected and ordered to leave. Others were caught entering or living in this country illegally, and failed to appear at their deportation hearings.
Often, illegal immigrants who have been issued deportation notices are given a certain amount of time to get out of the country on their own. They are not forcibly put aboard a plane; these deportations essentially operate on the honor system.
Generally, if they stay out of trouble -- if they do not get pulled over by police or swept up in a workplace raid, for example -- they are in little danger of being thrown out of the country.
That galls many immigration-reform advocates, who say that the practice breeds disrespect for the law and emboldens illegal immigrants to sneak in and stay.
"We are strong believers of enforcement of our immigration laws, and this is a priority area for getting the message across to this country, that if they've been convicted of committing crimes or if they have been ordered deported, that they will be apprehended if they try to hide and continue to stay in the country," said Jack Martin of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
Government officials say that they do the best they can with the money and manpower available to them, and that they focus on the most serious cases, including those involving illegal immigrants who have committed crimes in this country.
Overall, it's estimated that there are about 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States. In the past year, the government arrested and deported a record number of them, nearly 350,000, according to ICE.
It is not clear when Onyango, 56, the half-sister of Obama's late father, first came to the United States, but she moved into state-subsidized housing in Boston in 2003.
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