By Karen DeYoung. Washington Post Staff Writer. The Washington Post . Tuesday, April 25, 2000; Page A01
In arguments filed in federal court yesterday, the Justice Department said that there is no evidence that Elian Gonzalez helped prepare or understood an application for political asylum that bears his signature, no evidence that he would meet the standards for granting asylum and no reason for
his Miami great-uncle's views on these matters to outweigh those of Elian's father.
At the same time, the department argued, there is no basis for the court to conclude that Attorney General Janet Reno and the Immigration and Naturalization Service violated the law or administrative guidelines in refusing to consider the application for asylum. The 85-page brief, filed in the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, asks for the appeal of great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez to be dismissed.
Following the surprise predawn seizure of Elian by armed federal agents from the Miami home of Lazaro Gonzalez Saturday, the appeal has become the focus of the legal dispute over whether the 6-year-old boy stays in the United States or eventually returns to Cuba with his father. Oral arguments
are scheduled for May 11.
In asking the court to overturn a District Court ruling last month that upheld the INS decision, Lazaro Gonzalez argued that Elian has said he does not want to go to Cuba, that he will be persecuted there and that the government violated its own regulations in refusing to consider his
application for asylum.
After Elian was reunited Saturday morning with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, attorneys for the Miami relatives warned that Cuban government representatives here would try to "brainwash" the boy into repudiating the asylum application. They suggested that the father's attorney,
Gregory B. Craig, would file a motion with the court asking that the case be dismissed as moot since Elian--after being returned to his father's care--no longer wanted to stay here.
Craig said yesterday that legal strategy in the case, including whether the father will initiate any court action himself, was still being decided. "We're not going to talk about it," he said.
Meanwhile, although the two sides of the Gonzalez family were both still in the Washington area yesterday, their paths did not cross.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his wife, Elian and Elian's 6-month-old half-brother are expected to leave Andrews Air Force Base today to take up residence at a secluded, nearby international conference center, most likely Wye Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Craig reported that Elian played
during the day with the Spanish-speaking son of an Andrews officer and with Pablo Remirez, the 10-year-old son of Cuba's chief diplomat in Washington, Fernando Remirez.
"It's clear they have to move," Fernando Remirez said of the base, which is usually open to the public but has been under heavy security since the Gonzalezes took up residence Saturday.
Remirez insisted "there is nobody working with the child" or staying with them from the Cuban government. "It is not our responsibility," Remirez said. "We are not in charge, the U.S. marshals are." He said that the Cubans had responded to Gonzalez family requests
for Cuban food, clothing and supplies for the infant.
Under orders from the appeals court and the INS, Elian is not allowed to leave the country while the appeal is pending. Remirez said that Gonzalez had reiterated his request that some of Elian's schoolmates from Cuba be allowed to stay with him here. In addition to 12 children, the Cuban
government also has asked that mental health and education experts and a senior Cuban government official be granted visas to be with the family here. Officials in Havana indicated over the weekend they would no longer insist on a visa for Ricardo Alarcon, the head of Cuba's National Assembly. The
State Department said yesterday that the requests are still "under review."
Meanwhile, the Miami relatives, who have demanded to see Elian and Juan Miguel Gonzalez since arriving here on Saturday afternoon, were turned away again at Andrews. At a news conference last night outside a nearby hotel, Lazaro Gonzalez and his 21-year-old daughter, Marisleysis, stood as family
spokesman Emilio Vasquez said that "we have tried through all appropriate channels to make contact with the boy so that his family can truly be reunited. . . . I don't know what else the family needs to do to speak to this father."
Political arguments over whether the seizure was necessary, and how it was undertaken, continued yesterday through television appearances and public statements. Reno, on NBC's "Today" show, said she had "no regrets whatsoever" about the raid. She disputed statements by a
group of Miami mediators that an agreement with the relatives was near a successful conclusion.
The White House also went on the offensive, accusing prominent Republicans of distorting what happened for political gain and making what spokesman Joe Lockhart called "wild statements, wildly inaccurate." Some Republicans, Lockhart said, "very clearly have decided that there's
some politics to be played here, some perceived political gain, and they are going to play with it."
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who on Sunday compared the raid to something that "could only happen in Castro's Cuba," scheduled a meeting with Reno today to address senators' concerns about the Justice Department's action. About 10 other senators were invited, evenly
divided between Republicans and Democrats, although critics of the operation far outnumbered those who supported it.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), who presided over 1998 impeachment hearings against President Clinton, announced his panel's staff would begin "a preliminary inquiry" into the tactics used to seize the boy, at the request of House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert
(R-Ill.).
Meanwhile, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, which represents more than 17,500 federal officers, issued a statement expressing "strong disgust and dismay" over the criticism of the way the raid was conducted.
"To stigmatize career law enforcement officers because they utilize every tactical advantage during a law enforcement operation (including looking 'mean') shows a total lack of knowledge and understanding of tactical training," the statement said.
In Miami yesterday, angry Cuban American exile leaders called for a "Dead Tuesday," a work stoppage from 6 a.m. until midnight today to demand a federal probe of the Saturday morning raid at the Lazaro Gonzalez home. Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the exile group Democracy Movement,
said they hoped to "send a strong message that we want an investigation of the outrageous act of violence committed by federal authorities," and hoped most businesses would close their doors.
The government's appeals court brief filed yesterday attempts to respond to the suggestion raised by the court last Wednesday, when it granted the injunction requested by Lazaro Gonzalez against Elian leaving the country, that it might embrace the relatives' argument that a 6-year-old's
interests might legitimately diverge from those of his custodial parent.
"The question here is not whether Elian 'may' apply [for asylum], but whether he 'has applied,' " the government's brief said. Three pending asylum applications, two signed by Lazaro Gonzalez, and one by Elian, "are otherwise identical. None is written by Elian. None purports to
be a statement by Elian of what he thinks has happened or will happen to him if he returns to Cuba. None contains information that came from Elian.
"Someone else filled out those applications," the brief said. "Some adult, whether Lazaro or his attorneys, decided that he would speak for Elian. But another adult, Elian's father, exercising his parental authority, has objected to this. This case is, therefore, not about whether
Elian has spoken about asylum. It is about which of two adults will be allowed to speak about asylum for him: his father, with whom he has had a close relationship all his life until they were separated under traumatic circumstances last November; or a distant relative."
The brief repeated the steps the INS took to assure itself of Elian's close relationship with its father and of Juan Miguel Gonzalez's genuine desire to return with his son to Cuba. It noted the high standard an applicant must meet "to prove that he suffered past persecution or will suffer
future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. . . . Evidence of widespread human rights violations" in the country in question, it said, "is not sufficient."
Staff writers Sue Anne Pressley in Miami, Helen Dewar, Hamil R. Harris and Sylvia Moreno contributed to this report.
Weary Relatives Skip Base Visit
By Sylvia Moreno and Steve Vogel. Washington Post Staff Writers. Tuesday, April 25, 2000; Page A08
The Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez started their day here yesterday determined to speak to anyone who could get them to the boy. But in the end, they stood up a plethora of police brass, media and curious onlookers at Andrews Air Force Base awaiting the latest installment in the family drama.
With Prince George's Police Chief John S. Farrell in attendance, along with his top deputies, SWAT team members, a motorcycle brigade and the bicycle patrol--along with the military police guarding the entrance to the base, where the 6-year-old Cuban boy has been reunited with his father--a
police spokesman finally announced in the late afternoon the only significant news of the day in the case:
"The Miami family, they are tired," said Royce D. Holloway, spokesman for Prince George's police. "They went back to the hotel, and they're resting."
But even the slightest hint that Marisleysis Gonzalez and her father, Lazaro, who housed and cared for Elian in Miami for five months, and other relatives were thinking about leaving their Georgetown hotel for the air base sent officials scrambling. Family members had been turned away twice when
they tried to visit Andrews over the weekend.
"It's a question of public safety," Holloway said.
Not to mention cost. The custody battle over the Cuban shipwreck survivor has moved north out of Miami, where local officials estimated the price of keeping order near the Gonzalez family home at $1 million a day. Here, the costs have not been calculated exactly. But officials agree it is
sizable, affects various jurisdictions and ultimately will be paid by taxpayers.
Montgomery County bore the costs of keeping order outside the Bethesda home of the Cuban Interests Section chief, where Juan Miguel Gonzalez, Elian's father, stayed for two weeks with his family.
Extra local, federal and Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority officers have been pulled into demonstration duty outside the Cuban Interests Section in Northwest Washington, the Justice Department, Reagan National Airport, the house in Bethesda and now Andrews.
The cost of bringing Elian from Miami to the reunion with his father is being borne by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Justice officials said.
"We don't have any hard figures right now," INS spokeswoman Maria Cardona said of the costs.
The INS will reimburse the U.S. Marshal's service for the costs of the raid and the flight aboard a Marshal's service jet to Andrews, as well as the cost of providing security to Elian's father and his family.
The INS also is paying for the reunited Gonzalez family's stay at a distinguished visitors unit at Andrews. The cost is $36 a night, the same as military and civilian guests pay, a base spokesman said.
The family's presence at Andrews has mainly affected the gate, where additional Air Force security police have been posted to check the identifications of everyone entering the facility.
At least some of the fees for Gregory B. Craig, the attorney for Juan Miguel Gonzalez, are being paid by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, according to the National Council of Churches. The agency, based in Washington, is raising the money through a
humanitarian fund established by the board's executive committee, said the council, which has supported the return of Elian to his father.
And the costs of flying the Miami relatives to Washington, housing them in hotels, ferrying them around in a rented minivan and feeding them are being paid by the Cuban American National Foundation, a strongly anti-Fidel Castro group and one of the most powerful ethnic lobbies in the United
States. The foundation is based in Miami and has a Washington office, which is escorting the Miami relatives.
"We came forward to help them because we have a presence here in Washington," said Jose Cardenas. "We're going to step up to this family in their time of need."
Staff writers Hamil R. Harris, Raymond McCaffrey and Jamie Stockwell contributed to this report.
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