An immigration judge in Boston has set a hearing date for December 3 to determine if Onyango Obama, an uncle of President Obama, should be deported back to Kenya his native country, 50 years after he arrived in the U.S.

Leonard Shapiro, the immigration judge, made the announcement of the hearing date at a preliminary early on Wednesday. Following the Wednesday hearing, Scott Bratton the lawyer for Obama said he would ask the court to grant legal residency to Obama, in part because of the long period he has lived in the U.S.

Obama, who is 68, is a liquor store manager who came to the U.S. in 1963 at the age of 19 to attend an elite Cambridge, Massachusetts boys’ school. He became well known locally as a star on the soccer team, but dropped out of school shortly after arriving and on several occasions was ordered deported, with the most recently deportation order being in 1992.

Obama never left the country and lived for many years without authorities knowing he was still in the U.S., until he was arrested in August of 2011 by police in Framingham, Massachusetts on charges of drunken driving.

Obama was sentenced to one year’s probation in that case. Then in November of 2011, his case at the Immigration Board of Appeals was reopened. Part of that was done because his previous lawyer, now deceased, was said to be ineffective.

Few noticed the president’s uncle in the packed courtroom when he arrived to sit in the front row. He waited over an hour with 30 or more immigrants from Guatemala, Uganda, Pakistan who all had signs of tension on their faces, as they worried about being deported.