Los Angeles Times. Associated Press. Friday, August 11, 2000
WASHINGTON--The Immigration and Naturalization Service officers who seized Elian Gonzalez deserve to be honored by the agency because they conducted a difficult raid "without anybody getting hurt," Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Thursday.
INS Commissioner Doris Meissner will present the awards at a private ceremony next week at the agency's training center in Glynco, Ga.
A total of 131 immigration agents participated in Operation Reunion on April 22. Eight heavily armed, fatigue-clad and goggled Border Patrol agents entered the Miami house where the 6-year-old Cuban boy was living with relatives who had defied orders to return him to his father.
They emerged with the boy in about three minutes. One bystander was treated for a banged-up ear. Cuban Americans who opposed Elian's return to Cuba with his father reacted angrily, blocking intersections, overturning dumpsters and setting trash fires.
Many objected to the display of force captured in an Associated Press photograph that showed a goggled agent holding an MP-5 submachine gun as he discovered a frightened Elian in the arms of a family friend inside a bedroom closet. Reno has said the display of force was crucial to avoiding
the actual use of force during the raid.
The agent in the photograph said in a post-raid briefing that "I never purposely pointed my weapon" at Elian and that he had his weapon on safety and was using a standard grip on the weapon to facilitate searches without accidental firing. He said the family friend, Donato
Dalrymple, surrendered the boy and no force was used in removing him.
Asked if she approved of the INS awards for the agents, Reno said at her weekly briefing, "It is very important that we understand what a difficult job they have, and accord them the recognition of doing it without anybody getting hurt."
Only two of the agents involved have been identified publicly by the INS: commander James Goldman and agent Betty Ann Mills, who carried the boy from the house in a blanket.
Mills received threats after the raid. The government has withheld the other names.
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