The Washington Post, April 14, 2000
U.S. Lets Elian Deadline Pass
By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. Friday, April 14, 2000; Page A01
The Justice Department declined to take action yesterday after the great-uncle of Elian Gonzalez defied a government order and refused to surrender the 6-year-old boy, pushing the international custody dispute into another day amid escalating tension in Miami and mounting anger from Elian's
Cuban father.
As thousands of Cuban Americans protesting outside great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez's home in Miami's Little Havana vowed to prevent the boy's removal, Attorney General Janet Reno continued to seek a negotiated settlement despite adamant refusals on both sides of the Gonzalez family to alter
positions they have held for weeks.
Lazaro Gonzalez again demanded a face-to-face meeting with the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, after which, he has said, he would decide whether to turn over Elian. "We want the family to get together with no preconditions," said Manny Diaz, an attorney for the U.S. relatives.
The father again responded that there would be no meeting until Elian is "physically and legally" in his custody, as the Justice Department has ordered. "Juan Miguel Gonzalez asks only this, that the laws of this nation be enforced," the father's attorney, Gregory B. Craig,
said in a statement delivered outside his downtown Washington law office. "Today, Lazaro Gonzalez defied the nation's chief law enforcement officer. . . . Elian Gonzalez is being held unlawfully in Miami against his father's wishes."
Officials said that Reno, who spent a second day in Miami in charge of the situation, believed it was worth the additional delay--and the possibility of appearing indecisive--to exhaust every avenue of compromise before resorting to a forcible removal that she feared could result in violence.
Federal and state law enforcement officials were advising Reno on a series of options for proceeding in the event there is no "cooperative" solution, officials said.
"We have the authority to take action," Reno told reporters. "But responsible authority means not only . . . taking action . . . but knowing when and how to take it."
A senior official in Washington said the administration expected Elian to be in his father's custody "in the next day or so" and indicated that the Miami standoff would not be allowed to persist through the weekend. But others said it could stretch into next week and that the
government was more interested in success than speed.
President Clinton declined to second-guess Reno. "I think I should let her address what we're going to do and when we're going to do it," Clinton said in comments to reporters at the American Society of Newspaper Editors convention here. But, he said, "I think the issue here for
me is the rule of law. We have a system . . . if you don't think it's right, then you can say, well, we ought to change the laws." He noted that a federal court had upheld Reno's decision to return Elian to his father.
The Justice Department's ultimatum was issued Wednesday night, after the relatives refused Reno's request--made in a personal meeting in Miami--to bring Elian to Washington, meet with the father and turn over the boy. A subsequent Immigration and Naturalization Service letter instructed Lazaro
Gonzalez to relinquish Elian at Opa Locka airport, north of Miami, yesterday at 2 p.m.
Even before that deadline had passed, Reno announced that "you will not see marshals at 2:01 . . . attempting to remove the child by force." But unless the Miami relatives altered their refusal to comply with the federal order, it appeared that the U.S. marshals, accompanied by INS
agents, ultimately would be deployed to retrieve the boy.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who arrived here last week from Havana to reclaim his son, was said to be depressed and outraged by a videotape broadcast repeatedly yesterday on national television in which Elian addresses him
saying, "Daddy, I don't want to go to Cuba. . . . If you want to stay, come here, but I don't want to go back to Cuba."
The tape was apparently recorded by the relatives early Thursday morning in the boy's Little Havana bedroom after the meeting with Reno. "Daddy, you saw that old woman who came . . . she wants to take me back to Cuba," Elian said, apparently referring to Reno.
Former Arizona senator Dennis DeConcini (D), who met with the father yesterday in Bethesda, where he is staying in the home of a Cuban diplomat, told reporters that on the question of his return to Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez had told him: " I have no reason that I would want to leave Cuba.
I love Cuba. My family is there. I have a job there and I have a happy life there.' "
DeConcini said he had found Gonzalez anxious, disappointed and unable to understand why the system has not been able to deliver his son. He said Gonzalez wept when he mentioned the video.
Craig, the father's lawyer, said that since arriving here eight days ago, "Juan Miguel Gonzalez . . . has had to live the nightmare that he most dreaded . . . forced to watch Elian exploited by those who have him in their care." The video, Craig said, was part of an effort that has "emotionally
damaged and exploited this most wonderful little boy."
Craig also disputed a report from Father Francisco Santana, a priest stationed at Our Lady of Charity, the revered Cuban Catholic shrine in Miami, who visited the Miami relatives yesterday. Santana told reporters outside the house that Elian had personally told him that his father should come to
Miami if he wanted to talk to him. "The father has called several times this afternoon. He wanted to talk to Elian. The boy refuses to talk to the father," Santana said.
Craig said that Gonzalez had spoken to his son twice, soon after arriving from Havana, but that the Miami relatives have hung up the phone every time the father has called since then.
Meanwhile, the Miami relatives sought and received a temporary federal injunction from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordering the government to prevent his departure from this country. The ruling had no immediate bearing on the custody dispute, but the Miami relatives hailed it as an
interim victory in their pending appeal of last month's federal court decision upholding Reno's authority to decide Elian's fate.
The relatives have said they want to meet the father before turning over custody so they can persuade him to stay in the United States. Although Juan Miguel Gonzalez has said that he would await the outcome of the appeal, scheduled for a May 11 hearing in Atlanta, Reno acknowledged after earlier
negotiations with the relatives broke down that the father might not stay if the custody turnover came under duress.
Appeals Court Judge J.L. Edmondson, who issued the injunction, asked the government to respond to it by 9:30 this morning, after which the complete three-judge appeals panel will make a decision.
In a potentially more significant court action--at least on a political level--a Florida family court yesterday dismissed a separate, months-long effort by Lazaro Gonzalez to be awarded custody of Elian. Judge Jennifer Bailey said the U.S. Constitution prohibited state courts from preempting a
case that was clearly under federal immigration jurisdiction. Even in the absence of jurisdictional conflict, she said, Lazaro Gonzalez was ineligible for custody because under Florida law a great-uncle is not considered part of a child's "extended family."
In definitively dismissing the petition, Bailey wrote that "no motion for rehearing will be entertained."
The question of whether Elian's custody should fall under federal or state jurisdiction has been at the center of political dispute over the case. Both leading presidential candidates have said that Florida family court is the proper place for it, and Vice President Gore drew wide criticism
within the Democratic Party earlier this month when he broke with Clinton to say he thought the case "should be addressed in our domestic relations court." Gore endorsed special legislation that would remove Elian from INS jurisdiction by granting him permanent U.S. resident status.
Gore canceled what would have been his first news conference in two months yesterday after the state court decision was issued. From the campaign trail in North Carolina, spokesman Doug Hattaway said that "with the situation in Florida so volatile, we thought it was best not to be dragged
into it."
It marked the first time that Gore, who is aggressively pursuing Florida's 25 electoral votes, has shown reluctance to comment on the issue. Before he decided to support the permanent resident legislation--which has languished on Capitol Hill along with bills to make Elian a U.S. citizen--Gore
said his preference was for the father to "come here and stand on free soil to express the true feelings in his heart."
Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Gore's likely opponent in November's presidential election, has also said that the issue belongs in state court, and that Reno has the discretion to have it heard there.
In an initial response to the state ruling, campaign spokeswoman Mindy Tucker said Judge Bailey "had to make that decision" because the federal government had inappropriately seized jurisdiction of the case. A later statement, issued by spokesman Ari Fleischer, said that "were the
attorney general to exercise her discretion to defer to the state court's custody determination, the state court would have full jurisdiction to resolve the matter."
On the question of Lazaro Gonzalez's lack of standing as a relative, campaign domestic policy adviser Ted Cruz said, "The court's standing ruling closed off just one particular challenge, and there are numerous alternative avenues of relief, including appointing a guardian ad litem,"
someone to represent Elian's interests in court, "that could be pursued in Florida family court if the attorney general were to decide to defer to that court's jurisdiction."
The relatives launched a separate legal effort in U.S. District Court here yesterday aimed at preventing Elian from returning home. A civil complaint filed on Elian's behalf by attorneys for Lazaro Gonzalez maintained that forcing the child to return to Cuba would violate the United Nations
Convention on Human Rights and other international treaties.
Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. agreed to hear the request for a temporary restraining order at 11 a.m. today.
Staff writers Sue Anne Pressley in Miami and Ceci Connolly, Bill Miller, Sylvia Moreno, Terry M. Neal and Manuel Perez-Rivas in Washington contributed to this report.
Uneasiness Sets In at Growing Vigil in Little Havana
By Sue Anne Pressley and April Witt. Washington Post Staff Writers. Friday, April 14, 2000; Page A10
MIAMI, April 13 –– Helicopters buzzed overhead, drivers blasted car horns and grandmothers banged on pots and pans. Outside the modest white house in Little Havana, where Elian Gonzalez has spent the past 4 1/2 months and where, it was feared, federal marshals might come to get the
boy, the crowd was uneasy today--and ever growing.
Paramedics worked to revive those who fainted from the sticky heat and intense emotion. Bands of people marched through the surrounding streets, singing the Cuban national anthem. Prayer circles quietly formed in one area; chanters shouted "Libertad!" in another. Although it was
largely well-behaved, an air of defiance and anti-government fervor seemed to suffuse the crowd, as supporters waited on edge for the next step in the long-running and complicated showdown with federal officials.
"I will try to stop them," said retired waiter Jesus La Rosa. "Cubans respect the law, but we are like bees. We are very nice and make honey. But if you push the bee, we will sting. They are pushing us."
By late afternoon, the crowd swelled to thousands of people--clogging the major intersections of this largely Cuban American community and prompting police to reinforce barricades and enlarge a buffer zone around the house. Only a few of the officers wore flak jackets, and although they stood at
attention, eyeing the crowd carefully, they did not seem overly worried--not yet. No violence or arrests were reported.
"Obviously, things have come to a head," said Lt. Bill Schwartz, a spokesman for the Miami police department. "If the federal government does come in, if that should happen, we can expect more passion in the crowd, but we are comfortable that we will be able to do crowd control."
A life-size effigy of Cuban President Fidel Castro swung from a light pole a half-block from the house. Overhead, a small plane flew back and forth, trailing a banner that said, in Spanish, "Elian, Miami and God Love You." Protesters craned to get a glimpse of the celebrities who came
to have a say--among them, singer Gloria Estefan and actor Andy Garcia, both Cuban Americans, who visited with Elian inside and exhorted the crowd outside to remain calm.
"We want no violence. We are a peaceful community," Estefan said, after Elian's Miami relatives had defied an Immigration and Naturalization Service order to surrender the boy to federal authorities at 2 p.m. "We urge every Cuban American to join us in the effort."
At times, it seemed the protesters were attempting to answer that call. Norman del Valle, vice president of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, said that the Latin Chamber of Commerce shortly after noon today asked its member businesses to close their doors so that workers could pour out into
the streets and swell the crowds.
"We are very charged emotionally," said del Valle, owner of a hurricane-shutter company, as he paused in shouting through a bullhorn. But, he added, "We have to be watching the crowd all the time. We have infiltrators from the Castro government. They will try to excite the crowd
and get them to do something violent."
Eager for good news in what had largely been a grim week, the protesters were heartened by the afternoon development in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals; a judge granted an injunction that does not prevent the boy's reunion with his Cuban father waiting in Washington but does prohibit his
immediate return to Cuba. Augustina Roman, 70, a grandmother of eight, viewed the victory as nothing less than God-sent.
"This is a miracle. We prayed. This is a miracle," she said, looking heavenward and waving her hands at the sky.
Others were hardly ready to celebrate. For a group of Bay of Pigs survivors, wearing navy-blue hats that said in Spanish, Assault Brigade 2506, the Elian saga stirred memories of a government betrayal nearly 40 years ago.
"I feel ashamed of the United States," said businessman Eli Cesar, 63, who was captured during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and spent 22 months imprisoned in Cuba. "I love everything of this country. I always did. [But] this is the third time the United States has
double-crossed the freedom fighters--the first time with Kennedy, then with [President] Carter, who gave Nicaragua to the Sandinistas, now Clinton."
Turning Up the Video on the Elian Story
By Lisa de Moraes. Friday, April 14, 2000; Page C07
The broadcast networks aren't about to let Attorney General Janet Reno send in the troops to retrieve Elian Gonzalez without a camera in place, so they've wired the house just in case.
That will allow the networks to bring a pool camera in on a moment's notice to record any confrontation, explained ABC News spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.
Meanwhile, Elian's father has lashed out at U.S. networks for once again putting his child on the air without his permission. This time it was a home video cut by Elian's Miami relatives in which the little boy addresses his dad and tells him he doesn't want to go home.
The broadcast networks yesterday asked for, and received, permission from those relatives to wire the house in Little Havana where they've been keeping the 6-year-old for the past five months. ABC, CBS and NBC, along with Associated Press TV, have been using a pool camera to cover the standoff
from outside the house; they'd use the same arrangement with any footage taken inside the house, Murphy said, adding that her network would review any interior footage before broadcasting it.
But the broadcast networks inexplicably stuck mostly to their usual soap opera fare during the day yesterday, leaving a clear field for the cable news networks to blanket the standoff, which produced for them so very many delicious made-for-TV moments--like when Gloria Estefan clenched actor
Andy Garcia's hand in front of Elian's temporary quarters and hung on tight for several minutes to make sure all the cameras got it.
Then there was the video. Little Elian, sitting on a big bed, little gold chains around his neck, speaking with great animation to the camera, telling his father to stay or go home without him, it's all the same to him.
"Dad, I do not want to go to Cuba. If you want to, stay here. I am not going to Cuba," Elian said, according to CNN's translation.
The video got into the hands of Spanish-language network Univision and also turned up early yesterday morning on ABC's "Good Morning America," which had been tipped off shortly before it went on the air that the tape was available.
ABC News, you'll remember, had earlier cut an exclusive deal with those Miami kin to put the little boy on both "Good Morning America" and "20/20"--where he said he did not want to go home.
Not long after the "GMA" broadcast, the video turned up on the cable news networks and was rerun through the day's coverage, even though Gregory Craig, attorney for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, told the news media to stay away from the boy because he "has been exploited
enough."
"Mr. Gonzalez and only Mr. Gonzalez has the legal and moral right to speak for Elian Gonzalez," Craig said. "The news media should know that Mr. Gonzalez has not given his permission or approval for any journalist to interview, photograph, film or broadcast his son."
An ABC News exec told the Associated Press that "GMA" ran the video to illustrate how the propaganda war was escalating.
Right, and "Chicago Hope's" Barbara Hershey is a thoracic surgeon.
Special correspondent Catharine Skipp contributed to this report.
He Belongs With His Father
UNTIL ELIAN Gonzalez's father came to the United States, it was reasonable to doubt the sincerity of his expressed desire to have his child returned to Fidel Castro's repressive realm. Now he has had the opportunity to repeat that wish in the presence of U.S. officials, with no Cuban officials
in the room and with his wife and baby at his side. We are about as close to certainty as we are likely to get. The intransigence of Elian's Miami relatives is therefore increasingly indefensible, and their publicity campaign--particularly the video they released of Elian demanding that his father
not take him to Cuba--increasingly disturbing.
The great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, has basically dared Attorney General Janet Reno to come get Elian by force. Perhaps he believes that such a spectacle--to include, possibly, struggles between authorities and demonstrators, and the boy's own televised tears--will somehow vindicate his cause in
the eyes of the world. He's wrong. Cuban Americans have a legitimate case against Mr. Castro and a legitimate right to make his downfall their cause. In the matter of Elian, however, emotion has overtaken legal and political judgment. Most viewers of this ripe-for-cancellation soap opera will think
that the relatives, if they truly had Elian's interests at heart, would be preparing him for an inevitable transition, not turning him against his father.
Mr. Castro's failed rule is the ultimate cause of Elian's ill-fated voyage and, hence, this entire sad affair. But Cuban Americans in Miami need to wake up to the fact that, by pursuing this crusade in this manner, they are losing the propaganda battle to those who doubt--wrongly--the
repressiveness of Mr. Castro's regime.
Contributing to a sense that things are spiraling out of control is the spectacle of the attorney general of the United States and the commissioner of immigration and naturalization services both flying to Miami to beg one recalcitrant great-uncle to, please, please, obey the law. Now a federal
appeals court has intervened, and yet another Reno deadline has fallen by the wayside. If the effect of the ruling is to keep Elian in the United States until his Miami relatives have exhausted their legal remedies, that's as it should be. But neither the relatives nor the administration--nor, for
that matter, the courts--should be keeping Elian from his father any longer.
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