Staff and wire reports. Sun-Sentinel, Web-posted: 6:42 a.m. Apr. 22, 2000
updated at 9:40 a.m.
MIAMI -- Car horns blared, demonstrators turned over signs, trash cans and newspaper racks as word filtered through South Florida that Elian Gonzalez was seized from his relatives' home early this morning.
Federal agents took Elian from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn Saturday, firing pepper spray into an angry crowd as they took away the crying and screaming 6-year-old boy for a reunion in Washington with his Cuban father.
More than 20 agents in several white vans arrived at the home shortly after 5 a.m., using rams on the home's chain-link fence and front door to get inside and look for the boy, who 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 pointed an automatic rifle at Dalrymple holding 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 short time later, a woman and man brought Elian out of the home and put him in one of the vans, which sped off. Maria Elena Quesada, who was at the home, said Elian was screaming "Help me! Help me! Don't take me away!" in Spanish.
By 6 a.m., Elian was on a government plane headed for an airport near Washington and a reunion with his father. Juan Miguel Gonzalez was told about the raid as soon as Elian was safe and will meet his son at the airport, officials said.
"Juan Gonzalez wants to be with his son, and that will happen now," Attorney General Janet Reno said. She said she "did until the final moments try to reach a voluntary solution" with the boy's Miami relatives, but a deal was not reached and she felt she had no choice
but order the raid. She said the boy would stay in the United States pending further court action, as the federal appeals court ruled.
"Elian is safe and no one was seriously hurt," she said.
Not long after, crowds jammed a more than 10-block area of Little Havana, spreading from Northwest Seventh Street south to Calle Ocho and west past Southwest 27th Avenue.
Police officers, armed with automatic weapons, were poised to act if necessary. One Sun-Sentinel reporter saw eight people arrested in one incident. The charges were unknown.
In another incident, a man was chased by a group of people near the relatives' home, and beaten.
Elian was unhurt and was given a physical by a government doctor before he got on the plane, a government official said earlier, speaking on condition of anonymity. On the plane were the female immigration agent who carried Elian from the house, a psychiatrist, a flight surgeon and the
immigration agent who commanded the operation.
They were explaining carefully what is happening to him, the official said. Elian was described as subdued and calm on the plane.
He has been given a play kit including toys, Play-Doh, an airplane, a map and a watch, the official said.
After daylight, the boy's cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez came out of the house and spoke in a screeching voice to the crowd in words sprinkled with patriotic references to freedom and the land of opportunity.
"To have a 6-year-old crying, 'Don't take me, don't take me.' ... This is not America."
"They broke the rear window and put a gun to Elian's head," she said. "Whatever happens after this, let them pay the consequence."
In Washington, a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the government had hoped for a reunion and had "gone to extraordinary lengths to reach such a solution."
"We again negotiated throughout last night in good faith to try to reach a cooperative resolution," the Justice official said.
Kendall Coffey, an attorney for the Miami relatives, said "we were in the middle of negotiations when they battered the door."
"We're angry and disgusted," he said. "We were in communication with the mediator handling negotiations and discussion with the government when they knocked the door down."
It was a swift and violent 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 U.S. government has sought to reunite the
boy with his father.
"Assassins!" yelled some of the approximately 100 protesters, some of whom climbed over the barricades in an attempt to stop the agents. The agents, wearing Immigration and Naturalization Service shirts, were armed with automatic weapons.
"The world is watching!" yelled Delfin Gonzalez, the brother of the little boy's caretaker and great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez.
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"
Within an hour of the raid, the crowd in Little Havana quickly swelled to about 300. Several tried to rip apart and burn an American flag. No serious injuries were immediately reported.
The raid came amid reports of progress to immediately transfer custody of the boy from his Miami relatives to his father. Reno was at her office early this morning engaged in an extraordinary, long-distance negotiation that began Friday afternoon.
All of that ended 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 settlement was first proposed by civic leaders in Miami serving as intermediaries. Proposals and counterproposals flew through the night by telephone and facsimile machine between the Miami house, the Justice Department and the Washington office of the father's lawyer.
The government and the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, insisted that any deal contain an immediate transfer of custody of Elian to him, but the Miami relatives have defied Reno's order switching custody.
The relatives have cared for him 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 do not want the boy returned to a
Cuba ruled by Fidel Castro.
The deal under discussion called for Juan Miguel Gonzalez and Elian, Lazaro and his daughter, Marisleysis, to move to one of two foundation-owned conference centers near Washington -- either Wye Plantation, a center on Maryland's Eastern shore that has been used for Mideast peace
conferences, or Airlie House near Warrenton, Va., according to a government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The plan called for formal custody to transfer immediately from the Miami relatives to the boy's Cuban father, the official said.
Another sticking point was the length of the joint occupation of the compound. The intermediaries proposed that all family members stay until a court appeal is completed, in late May at the earliest. But Juan Miguel Gonzalez called for a much shorter joint stay, the official said.
Reno, Immigration Commissioner Doris Meissner and other officials waited in Reno's Justice Department office past midnight for the relatives' reply to the counterproposal.
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.
Reno met for 15 minutes Friday at the Justice Department with Juan Miguel Gonzalez. During the emotional session, the father said he had a very good 25-minute telephone conversation with his son on Thursday, the government official said. He also asked Reno to give him a date certain when he
would get his son back.
But afterward, Reno said she told him "that I could not commit to a particular course of action or timetable."
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