Elián González

Elián González (born December 6, 1993) is a Cuban boy who was at the center of a custody and immigration battle between Cuba, the United States government, his father, his Miami relatives and the Cuban community of Miami. The latter two parties wanted him to stay in the United States after he survived an attempt by his mother to emigrate to the United States in November 1999. She and ten others died, leaving Elián to float across the Florida Straits on an inner tube with two other survivors. The battle sparked an enormous media circus.

Under a 1995 migration accord with Cuba, Cubans who make it to United States soil are generally allowed to remain in the country. However, Elián was rescued at sea by two fisherman who then gave him to the United States Coast Guard. But, instead of following procedure and placing him at a facility until his status could be resolved, the Immigration and Naturalization Service released Elián to his great uncle, Lazaro. INS officials told reporters neither they nor the State Department had any legal say in the matter. Then, Cuban president Fidel Castro demanded the boy be returned to Cuba, touching off the firestorm that ended only when Elián, his father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, Juan Miguel's wife and their son, and a cousin were flown back to Havana on June 28, 2000.

Elián's mother, Elizabeth, apparently took him without Juan Miguel's knowledge, so in addition to the case's refugee overtones, it was also a custody battle. Cuba, the INS, and Department of Justice (DOJ), argued that for this reason Elián should be returned to his father. However, the fact Elián was a minor didn't mandate he be returned to his father, since U.S. immigration laws anticipate Juan Miguel could speak for Elián only if it was assumed he was not under duress from the Cuban Government, and that Elizabeth did not die in a situation that indicated her desires as to the ultimate residence of the child. The circumstances of Elizabeth's death made clear where she wanted Elián to live.

Elián's Miami home became the site of a media circus. For much of the summer of 2000, his plight dominated the news. Most of the American press sided with President Bill Clinton's Administration's revised position on the matter, couching their reports with stereotypes which would not have been tolerated toward any other ethnic group: Time Magazine described the Cuban-led Miami city government as a "banana republic"; the May 1 issue of Newsweek contained phrases like "the fiery Marisleysis" (Elián's cousin, who was seen as a maternal figure to the boy) and "the hotheads around Lazaro"; the New York Times called the Miami Cubans "haters"; the Chicago Tribune called them "crazies"; Pat Oliphant, America's most widely syndicated editorial cartoonist, drew an ape-like Lazaro thumping his chest. Eerily, they echoed the remarks Castro made to the Cuban government newspaper, Granma. Castro said Elián had no right to request asylum, which was what most of the experts interviewed by the U.S. media were saying. Castro also called the Miami Cubans "Mafia" and suggested they had kidnaped Elián; these views were more than evident in the mainstream media's coverage. In September, 2000, Castro granted the Chicago Tribune and Dallas Morning News Havana bureaus.

The release of a videotape on April 14 in which Elián "tells" Juan Miguel that he wants to stay in the U.S. seemed like the last straw on a camel's back already loaded down with missteps, miscalculations and miscues by the supporters who cynically used the case to further their own agendas. Not even a family spokesman could explain away the male voice heard off-camera, apparently coaching the boy. But, to suggest the Miami Gonzálezes were naive dupes who found themselves overwhelmed, then muzzled, by "advisors" as things spun out of control would be wrong. They staged an elaborate campaign for sympathy as Elián went to Disney World one day, then met with politicans the next. The family even went so far as to play on the religious convictions of their neighbors by encouraging them to see Elián as El Niño Milagro, "the miracle child", chosen by God to liberate Cuba. On April 19, the 11th Circuit Court in Atlanta ruled that Elián must stay in the United States until the Miami Gonzálezes could appeal for an asylum hearing in May.

Negotiations over how/when to transfer Elián were on-going when, in the pre-dawn hours of April 22, U.S. Marshals burst into Lazaro's home. Attorney General Janet Reno - who secured a custody order from a magistrate 10 hours before the raid - had the INS revoke Elián's visa, allowing her to arrest him for being an illegal alien. A photograph by Alan Diaz of the Associated Press shows a Marshal with a submachine gun pointed at terrified Elián and one of the men who had found him in the water. According to the April 25 New York Times, Reno hestitated to use force, but Juan Miguel demanded it. The White House spun the Diaz photograph not in political terms (or, worse, as Clinton doing Castro's bidding), but seen as an effort to reunite a boy with his father for the sake of "family values". Harvard University Law Professor Lawrence Tribe wrote in the April 23 New York Times that the raid "shakes the very safeguards of liberty".

Elián was taken to Andrews Air Force Base, then to the Wye River Plantation in Maryland, which was outside the 25 mile zone Cuban operatives were allowed to travel. The media was barred from access to the family. New Hampshire Senator Bob Smith, escorting the Miami Gonzálezes, was turned away from Andrews by guards. The May 5 Miami Herald reported that Elián was joined by his classmates (without their parents) and his teacher from his hometown, Cárdenas. Granma released pictures of Elián in a Young Pioneer uniform, Cuba's communist youth league. On May 6, attorney Greg Craig, who steered the president through his impeachment trial, took Elián and Juan Miguel to a dinner in Georgetown thrown by Clinton supporters Smith and Elizabeth Bagley. The media, who had scolded the Miami Gonzálezes for exploiting the boy, ignored the story.

From the moment Elián was taken, the "battle" to keep him in the U.S. was not much of a battle. Ramón Saúl Sánchez, head of the Cuban-American Democracy Movement, one of the many anti-Castro activists whom latched onto the Miami Gonzálezes, hired Kendall Coffey, Reno's ex-U.S. Attorney in Miami to represent the Miami Gonzálezes. Sánchez hoped that Coffey's ties could soothe tensions. However, his practice was dependent upon the Democratic Party elite. Hence, instead of forcing the DOJ to start at, and work their way through, the Florida courts, giving his team the time it needed to gather evidence against the DOJ, Coffey agreed to "fast track" the case, going directly to the federal courts. On April 13, the Miami Dade Circuit Court ruled Lazaro was "too distant a relative" to sustain a claim for custody. Coffey filed a notice of appeal of that decision, then dropped it. Legal experts agree the ruling was in error; appealing it would've set up a potentially lengthy fight over which takes precedence: federal asylum law or state family law. Moreover, Coffey did not go to the 11th Circuit Court to demonstrate that the raid was illegal and obtained by a false affidavit, and never brought to the Court's attention proof the INS and Castro allegedly made a deal to send Elián back in December 1999. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a last-minute appeal.

Elián now lives with his family in Cárdenas.

External links

• Famous photograph of raid on relatives' house
• Elian Gonzalez and family flying home to Cuba - CNN, June 28, 2000