Good news for a longtime resident of Pleasant Valley who will now be a permanent one. William Keleture came to Iowa more than a decade ago on a visitor’s visa. After a few years he applied for asylum, telling immigration officials his family had been killed in Uganda and the same fate awaited him if he went back there. It wasn’t until 2001 he got his answer — asylum denied. But by then Keleture had married and had a young child. That didn’t automatically make him a citizen, but he thought his immigration attorney had filed an appeal of the deportation order. By the time he learned the lawyer didn’t do it, Keleture was shocked to find himself being arrested a year and a half ago. On Tuesday, his wife and five-year-old daughter were in the Council Bluffs courtroom when a Chicago judge in a videoconference declared Keleture’s been granted permanent residency in the U.S.
