Obama's Aunt Awaiting Decision on Asylum

Updated at 3:54 p.m. ET

An immigration hearing for President Obama's African aunt has ended without an immediate decision in her bid for asylum.

Kenya native Zeituni Onyango testified for about two-and-a-half hours Thursday at the closed proceedings in U.S. Immigration Court. Two doctors also testified in support of the case her lawyer said includes medical reasons to stay in the U.S.

Attorneys for Onyango and the government have 30 days to file closing briefs. The hearing could continue on May 25 if the judge does not issue a ruling before then.

Onyango, the half-sister of Mr. Obama's late father, moved to the United States in 2000. Her first asylum request was rejected, and she was ordered deported in 2004. But she didn't leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston.

The 57-year-old Onyango arrived in a wheelchair Thursday, a cane across her lap. In an interview in November with The Associated Press, she said she is disabled and learning to walk again after being paralyzed from Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder.

It was not clear when Judge Leonard Shapiro would rule. Lauren Alder Reid, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, said the judge could issue a decision Thursday after the hearing, could continue the hearing and hear additional testimony on another date, or could issue a decision later.

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the first family is not helping pay Onyango's legal fees and that the president has not spoken to her since he learned of her immigration status just days before the November 2008 elections.

"We would continue to say that everybody in this country should and must follow the law," Gibbs said. "We have not been involved at all in that hearing."

In November, Onyango said she never asked Mr. Obama to intervene in her case and didn't tell him about her immigration difficulties.

"He has nothing to do with my problem," she told the AP.

In his memoir, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance," Obama affectionately referred to Onyango as "Auntie Zeituni" and described meeting her during his 1988 trip to Kenya.

Onyango helped care for the president's half brothers and sister while living with Barack Obama Sr. in Kenya.