(CNN) -- A federal immigration judge will decide Thursday whether President Obama's aunt, who has been in the United States illegally for years, will be allowed to stay.

Zeituni Onyango, 57, applied for political asylum in 2002, citing violence in her native Kenya. She is the half-sister of the president's late father.

She was a legal resident of the United States at the time and had received a Social Security card a year earlier.

After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor.

A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week.

Although President Obama has spent much of his time in office moving away from the policies of his predecessor, on immigration enforcement, he has embraced several Bush administration initiatives, and the changes he has promised to make are couched in nuance.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Obama administration is expanding immigration checks to nearly all local jails, which could sharply increase U.S. deportation cases, The Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

Expanding the program could result in a tenfold increase in illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and identified for deportation, the report said, citing current and former U.S. officials.

After days of slurs and speculation and a fair number of government media interviews, no charges have been brought against any of the men arrested in Liverpool and Manchester on suspicion of ... well, who knows quite what? Being seen in or near shopping centres and nightclubs while Pakistani? We have been told that international student visas have been subject to abuse, that universities need to do more and that the whole system needs to be tightened up. Now the arrested men are facing deportation on the grounds of "national security" (Lord Carlile calls inquiry into terror bomb plot raids, 23 April). I take it this means their immigration status has been in order.