Another one of U.S. President Barack Obama’s family members has proven to be an embarrassment to the Obama administration.
Obama’s long-lost “Uncle Omar,” whom he mentioned in his best-selling book Dreams from My Father, was arrested in Massachusetts for drunk driving on August 24.
Police say Onyango Obama, 67, the half-brother of Obama’s father, was handcuffed outside the Chicken Bone Saloon in Framingham, Massachusetts, at 7.10pm, after rolling through a stop sign and nearly crashing his Mitsubishi 4×4 into a patrol car.
In his police report, the arresting officer noted “slurred speech” and a strong odor of alcohol on Mr. Obama’s breath.
Officer Val Krishtal said Uncle Omar was defiant, and repeatedly interrupted the officer telling him his version of the events were “inaccurate.”
“I explained to him that I narrowly avoided striking his vehicle, and he told me that he did not hear my tires screeching,” officer Krishtal wrote in the report.
After being booked at the police station and told he could have one phone call to make bail, Uncle Omar said, “I think I will call the White House.”
A short time later police noticed Onyango Obama’s name on an immigration detainer, used by ICE to identify illegal immigrants in jail or prison who previously had deportation orders. He is being held without bail pending transfer to ICE custody.
In his 1995 book, President Obama writes of “the uncle who had left for America 25 years ago and had never come back”. Obama also noted a Kenyan expression about getting lost, or not hearing from someone who moved away and stopped communicating with relatives — “like our Uncle Omar, in Boston.”
In 2008, British newspaper The Times mounted a search for Uncle Omar but failed to locate him. Instead, The Times found President Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango — Uncle Omar’s sister — living as an illegal immigrant in a Boston public housing project.
Aunt Onyango eventually won the right to remain in the U.S. And The Times has confirmed that the same attorney who represented Aunt Onyango at the immigration hearings is now representing Uncle Omar.
