Onyango Obama

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that President Barack Obama briefly lived with an uncle who faced deportation from the United States, correcting its previous statements that the president had never met Onyango Obama.

The 69-year-old, Kenyan-born half-brother of Obama’s estranged father was granted permission this week to stay in the U.S. after ignoring a deportation order two decades ago. The uncle is also known as Omar Obama.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said that when the case first arose, officials looked for records of a meeting but never directly asked the president.

“When Omar Obama said the other day, and there were reports that he had said the other day that President Obama, back when he was a law school student, had stayed with him in Cambridge, I thought it was the right thing to do to go ask him,” Carney said.

“Nobody had asked him in the past, and the president said that he, in fact, had met Omar Obama when he moved to Cambridge for law school and that he stayed with him for a brief period of time until his — the president’s apartment was ready.”

Carney said that after that, uncle and nephew saw each other once every few months while the younger Obama was in Cambridge. Carney said that after Obama attended law school, the two fell out of touch.

“The president has not seen Omar Obama in 20 years and has not spoken with him in roughly 10 years,” Carney said.