From Ian Brodie In Washington. The Sunday Times, UK. April 24, 2000
REPUBLICANS, with George W. Bush in the lead, have immediately seized political advantage from the chaotic armed rescue of Elián González on Saturday, while Al Gore frantically tried to distance himself from the Administration in which he serves as Vice-President.
The photograph of the frightened Cuban castaway being whisked from his home at gunpoint was "chilling" and not an image that a freedom-loving nation wanted to show the world, Mr Bush, the Republican nominee for President, said.
"I am profoundly saddened and troubled that the Administration was not able to negotiate a resolution and instead decided to use force to take a little boy from the place he calls home in the middle of the night."
Mr Gore, the Democratic choice to run for the White House, issued a statement reiterating what he had said in the past - that the issue should have been handled through a family court. This break from the Administration, signalled a couple of weeks ago, overlooks the fact that immigration
matters go to a federal, not a family, court.
Mr Gore has been more or less forgiven for his apostasy at the White House, where it is recognised that what is really at stake for Mr Gore and Mr Bush is the state of Florida in the election.
However, the pre-dawn raid clearly complicates Mr Gore's decision about whether to dedicate money and time to fighting for Florida, the nation's fourth most populous state, with 800,000 Cuban-Americans in the Miami area alone.
A win there is vital for Mr Bush to counter Mr Gore's advantages in New York and California and the Texas Governor can expect a strong boost from his brother, Jeb Bush, who is Governor of Florida.
In the 1996 election, however, President Clinton proved that Florida could be snatched by Democrats from its traditional Republican grasp.
Mr Bush is four points ahead of Mr Gore in the latest presidential election poll, but feelings are running high after the Elián snatch and this narrow lead could easily be reversed.
Other Republicans have thrown their weight behind Mr Bush's stance, the first time the party has recognised his leadership with one voice. Their reaction ranged from the mild, such as Trent Lott, the Senate Republican leader, who said that the use of force was unjustified, to Lincoln Dia-Balart,
a Miami congressman, who was born in Havana and who said that Mr Clinton had committed a "monstrous crime" by turning Elián over to the Castro dictatorship.
Tom DeLay, Republican House whip, expressing his outrage, described the raid as illegal and promised an investigation on Capitol Hill into what rights the immigration officials had to enter a private home. They said that they had a search warrant.
Rudolph Giuliani, the New York Mayor who is running for the Senate, called the raid an outrage. Hillary Clinton, his opponent, remained silent on the issue.
White House officials accused the Republicans of using Elián as a political pawn. They also asked why, as supporters of family values, some Republicans were against reuniting Elián with his father and supported the Miami relatives in disobeying the law.
The answer, of course, is that, where the Castro regime in Cuba is involved, everything changes.
The relatives, who were turned away from Andrews air force base near Washington, where Elián was staying, held a press conference yesterday to repeat their anguish and to berate the Government.
Marisleysis González, the cousin of Elián and his surrogate mother for the five months since his real mother died at sea, wept as she described the raid. She claimed that, after breaking down the door, an agent waving a gun had said: "Give us the damn boy or I'll blow your
brains out."
Doris Meissner, Commissioner for the Immigration Service, insisted that the officer would not have said anything like that. The operation was completely legal, she said, but she acknowledged that "an enforcement action is a frightening event".
Eric Holder, deputy to Janet Reno, the Attorney-General, said that she had been on the phone with Ms González, Elián's cousin, when the three-minute raid took place.
"The Attorney-General was on the phone, but at that point the negotiations had ended," he said.
The relatives asserted that they thought they were still negotiating. The sticking point was their refusal to hand Elián over to his father, Mr Holder said.
A picture of Elián with his father was offered by Joan Brown Campbell, an official with the National Council of Churches, who spent two hours with them in their quarters. She said that Elián was crawling over his father's lap and appeared to be a "contented, happy,
mischievous, normal little boy".
She continued: "I was impressed by the fact that Juan Miguel González was not afraid to discipline his child. Elián was jumping up and down and being a little boy, and his father just said, Elián" - at this point her voice took on a tone of slight reproof.
The relatives have claimed that Señor González has a violent temper.
Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Ltd. |