New York Times, April 22, 2000
Elian Seized in Christian Holy Week
By Julia Lieblich. AP Religion Writer. Saturday, April 22, 2000; 1:50 p.m. EDT
Federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez on Holy Saturday, or the Angelic Night, a time of sadness and joy for Christians, marking the end of Lent and heralding Easter.
The timing is not lost on Miami's mostly Roman Catholic demonstrators, who have been praying and holding vigils outside Elian's Miami relatives' home for months in an attempt to prevent the boy's return to communist Cuba.
"This is like crucifying the Messiah all over again. This is a slap in the face to the Cuban-American community and the Christian community," demonstrator Ralph Anrrich said outside the house after Elian was removed.
The demonstrators have long portrayed Elian as their angel, some believing he has mystical powers because of a survival at sea from a shipwreck that killed his mother and 10 other people.
The drama of Christendom's holiest week only added to their fervor.
Religious icons, flowers and photos of the 6-year-old Cuban boy were in makeshift shrines throughout heavily Catholic Little Havana on Good Friday, which marks the crucifixion of Jesus. One neighbor set up a life-sized statue of Jesus draped in a purple cape. A photo of Elian was at its feet,
next to a printout saying: "God can make the impossible possible."
At the home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, a painting of a Cuban saint, the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, hung on the front door. Cubans say she appears to refugees fleeing on rafts to the United States.
A mural near the house depicts Elian inside an inner tube in rough seas, protected by dolphins, long a Christian symbol of love and tenderness and the desire to know Jesus. A woman resembling the Virgin Mary stands over him, and a pair of giant outstretched hands reach down from the sky.
One of the two fishermen who rescued Elian on Thanksgiving, Donato Dalrymple, saw mahi mahi – not porpoises – near the boy. Still, he believes the dolphin story.
"I would like to believe that God used the dolphins as an instrument to keep him safe in that water," Dalrymple said.
Elian Gonzalez Reunited With Dad
By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press Writer. Saturday, April 22, 2000; 2:21 p.m. EDT
ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE, Md. –– Seized by armed agents before dawn, Elian Gonzalez was reunited with his father today after a frantic and forceful end to a five-month standoff between the government and the Cuban boy's Miami relatives.
"They are together," said Myron Marlin, the Justice Department spokesman.
Federal agents seized Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn today, firing pepper spray into an angry crowd as they took away the screaming 6-year-old boy for the reunion with his father.
Father and son met at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, the secured base used for the president's travels.
A photograph released by Gonzalez's attorney, Gregory Craig, showed a smiling Elian in the arms of his father and surrounded by his stepmother, Nersy, and baby half-brother, Hianny. A second picture showed Elian playing with Hianny.
Craig told MSNBC, "I found no evidence in the brief time I spent with Elian that he was in any way terrorized, frightened, traumatized or otherwise troubled. He seemed to be very happy to be back with his father."
After the lengthy standoff, it took federal agents just three minutes to enter the Miami home and take Elian away from the relatives who had been caring for him since his rescue at sea and are fighting to keep the boy from returning to his native Cuba.
Shortly before 2 p.m., Miami relatives of the boy left on a flight for Washington. American Airlines refused to confirm the passengers aboard, but the Cuban American National Foundation said they were Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy's great-uncle, Marisleysis, a cousin who had been caring for the boy,
and another cousin, Georgina Cid Cruz.
The drama began to unfold at 5 a.m., when more than 20 agents in several white vans arrived at the house and used rams on the home's chain-link fence and front door to get inside.
The boy was being hidden in a bedroom closet by his great-aunt and Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who rescued him on Thanksgiving Day.
In the bedroom, an agent in green riot gear and goggles and holding an automatic rifle confronted Dalrymple clutching the frightened child, an image captured by an Associated Press photographer and broadcast around the world. Agents then took Elian out of Dalrymple's arms.
A Spanish-speaking female immigration agent carried Elian from the home and put him in one of the vans, which sped off as pepper spray was fired to keep the distraught crowd back.
Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, said the agent had a soothing message for Elian – worked out in advance: "This may seem very scary. It will soon be better." The boy was told he would be taken to "papa."
Maria Elena Quesada, who was at the home, said Elian was screaming "Help me! Help me! Don't take me away!" in Spanish.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez was told about the raid as soon as Elian was safe.
"He was very tearful, very happy," said Joan Brown Campbell, a former official of the National Council of Churches who talked to Gonzalez before he left for the airport. "This is a moment he'd waited for for a very long time. And he's glad the boy is safe."
By 6 a.m., the boy was on a government plane headed for the Washington area and the reunion with his father.
The decision to act was made by Attorney General Janet Reno, President Clinton said during a brief question and answer session in the White House Rose Garden. "She managed this, but I fully support what she did," he said.
Reno said she tried to reach a negotiated solution until the final moments but the relatives "kept moving the goal post and raising the hurdles."
She said the boy would stay in the United States pending further court action over the question of asylum, as the federal appeals court ruled – a statement confirmed by Gonzalez's lawyer, Gregory Craig.
"Juan Gonzalez has made a commitment to remain in the United States during this appeal, and he will live up to that commitment," Craig said.
Elian was given a physical by a government doctor before he got on the plane, a government official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity. A psychiatrist was among those on the plane.
Elian was described as subdued and calm on the flight. He was given Play-Doh, a toy airplane, a map and a watch.
In Havana today, Cubans wept in happiness. In an official statement read over state radio stations, the government urged Cubans to "maintain calm and avoid public displays" over the event
But in Miami, under a brilliant, clear sky, crowds began to gather in Little Havana as the city awoke to the realization that Elian was gone. By midmorning, drivers on one highway demonstrated with a slowdown.
Police closed off 35 blocks around the home after dawn as people at a street intersection burned debris and yelled at a line of officers in riot gear.
"We have our office in full mobilization," said Lt. Bill Schwartz, a police spokesman.
The siege appeared to catch the family completely off guard. After daylight, Marisleysis Gonzalez came out of the house and shouted to the crowd in words sprinkled with patriotic references.
She said the agents broke down the door yelling, "'Give us the (expletive) boy. We'll shoot. We'll shoot. We'll shoot,'" as she begged them not to take him or let him see the guns.
"How can this boy be OK when he had a gun to his head?" she said. "I thought this was a country of freedom."
But Reno said, "the Miami relatives rejected our efforts, leaving us no other option but the enforcement action." She also said the gun was not pointed directly at the boy.
Ms. Gonzalez and Kendall Coffey, an attorney for the Miami relatives, said they were in the middle of negotiations and had been put on hold by the mediator when the agents arrived. "We're angry and disgusted," Coffey said.
It was a swift step in the international custody dispute over the little boy rescued off the Florida coast nearly five months ago. His Miami relatives have sought to retain the temporary custody they were granted in November, while the government worked to bring father and son together.
"Assassins!" came the cry from a crowd of about 100 protesters, some of whom climbed over barricades trying to stop the agents. The agents, wearing INS shirts, were armed with automatic weapons.
Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the anti-Castro Democracy Movement, was bleeding from one ear after the raid. He said he was knocked out by an agent using a rifle as a club.
"They were animals," said Jess Garcia, a bystander. "They gassed women and children to take a defenseless child out of here. We were assaulted with no provocation"
Miami police executives, including the chief, had some notice of the raid but officers at the scene had only a moment's notice, said Schwartz, the department spokesman.
The raid came amid reports of progress in talks to transfer custody of the boy immediately to his father. Reno was at her office early this morning engaged in a long-distance negotiation that began Friday afternoon.
All of that ended in failure early today.
Carlos Gonzalez said he and several others tried to form a human chain in front of the door but were forced back at gunpoint.
Inside, Dalrymple held Elian in his arms as the agents arrived. He said agents told him "give me the boy or I'll shoot you."
"They took this kid like a hostage in the nighttime," he said.
The government and Juan Miguel Gonzalez insisted that any deal contain an immediate transfer of custody of Elian to him, but the Miami relatives refused.
The relatives have cared for Elian since he was found clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic after a boat carrying his mother and other Cubans capsized, killing her and 10 others. They and the hundreds of Cubans who gathered for days outside their home don't want the boy returned to a Cuba
ruled by Fidel Castro.
The deal that was under discussion called for Juan Miguel Gonzalez and Elian, Lazaro and Marisleysis to move to one of two foundation-owned conference centers near Washington, with formal custody being transferred immediately to the father, a Justice Department official said. The two sides
couldn't agree on the custody issue or how long they might live together pending the end of the court battle.
The Miami relatives lost a U.S. District Court battle to get a political asylum hearing for Elian. An appeals court has ordered Elian to stay in this country until it hears that case, but did not bar Reno from switching custody.
EDITOR'S NOTE – AP writers Alan Clendenning in Miami and Michael J. Sniffen in Washington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
Immigration and Naturalization Service: http://www.ins.usdoj.gov
Miami relatives: http://libertyforelian.org
Cubans in N.J. Protest Elian Removal
By Amy Westfeldt, Associated Press Writer. Saturday, April 22, 2000; 2:24 p.m. EDT
UNION CITY, N.J. –– Residents of the nation's second-largest Cuban-American community waved Cuban flags and honked their horns in protest Saturday after hearing that Elian Gonzalez had been removed from the home of his Miami relatives.
"I was in tears," Rosa Grabe de Peralta said at the Union City Cafeteria, where Spanish television blared the news. "I thought that this was the land of the free, but apparently it's not."
Nearly 100 people protesting the government's seizure of the 6-year-old Cuban boy blocked Route 495, a viaduct connecting the New Jersey Turnpike with the Lincoln Tunnel, which runs under the Hudson River to New York City. Hundreds of cars were lined up for about a half-hour on Saturday
afternoon.
Three boys who appeared to be about 8 or 10 years old briefly lay on the highway in front of a Greyhound bus. One man with a microphone screamed continuously, "Free Elian!" and "Freedom!"
Elian was found floating in an inner tube Nov. 25 off the coast of Florida. His mother and 10 other people died when their boat sank while they tried to flee Cuba. Elian's Miami relatives want him to stay in the United States.
"President Clinton is following Fidel Castro's orders," said Luis Nunez, 48, sitting inside the El Artesano restaurant.
Roland Rolo, sipping coffee in a Cuban cafe, said he believed that Elian should have been allowed to stay in Miami, but understood the government's action.
"You've got a family laughing at the attorney general, and sooner or later you've got to show them some authority," said Rolo, 44, of Piscataway. "The family overestimated their position of power."
Hudson County, in northern New Jersey, is home to about 150,000 Cuban-American immigrants, the nation's largest outside of Miami.
© Copyright 2000 The Associated Press
By Amanda Riddle. Associated Press Writer. Saturday, April 22, 2000; 2:29 p.m. EDT
MIAMI –– The scene in Lazaro Gonzalez's bedroom could hardly have been more dramatic: a federal agent wearing green riot gear, a helmet and goggles was carrying an automatic rifle when he confronted a man holding a frightened Elian Gonzalez in a closet.
The chilling moment was captured in a series of photos Saturday by an Associated Press photographer and transmitted to newspapers and broadcasters around the world. The attorney general was asked about the image at a news conference where she defended the approach to taking custody of the
6-year-old Cuban child.
AP free-lance photographer Alan Diaz said Elian was crying and yelled to him, "Que esta pasando?" – What's happening? – moments before a federal agent burst into the bedroom room where he was being held.
The photos were among several shot by Diaz and distributed by the AP throughout the night and into the morning. They included one showing Elian's second cousin, Marisleysis, breaking down after the boy was removed, and one of his great-uncle Lazaro being comforted by family and friends.
When the pre-dawn raid began, Diaz was with another photographer and an NBC cameraman on the lawn next door to the house of Elian's great-uncle.
With the arrival of federal agents, "All of a sudden hell broke loose," said Diaz. "All I recall is the NBC guy saying, 'They're here, they're here."
Diaz and the cameraman jumped over the chain-link fence in front of the Gonzalez home and walked into the house. An associate of the relatives directed Diaz to the room Elian had been sharing with Marisleysis.
"A family friend grabbed me and he said, 'Go to the room, go to the room,'" Diaz said. But Elian wasn't there. The photographer then knocked on the door of Lazaro's bedroom, and his wife, Angela, opened it. Elian was in a closet, held by Donato Dalrymple, one of the two fishermen who
had rescued him at sea on Thanksgiving Day.
Dalrymple said that amid the noise and commotion from the agents breaking into the home, he had run to the boy and taken him into his arms, retreating to Lazaro Gonzalez's bedroom.
Diaz recalled that when he arrived in the bedroom, Elian "was crying and he was asking me, 'What's happening?' and all I said was, 'Nothing's wrong.' I mean, what was I going to say?"
Seconds later, federal agents entered the room and seized the boy. Elian continued to cry and ask, "What's happening?"
"They went to the closet and I shot (the photograph of) them grabbing the baby," Diaz said.
At a news conference in Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno was asked whether the photograph had raised the question of excessive force.
"One of the beauties of television is that it shows exactly what the facts are," Reno said. "And as I understand it, if you look at it carefully, it shows that the gun was pointed to the side, and that the finger was not on the trigger."
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