WASHINGTON, 5 (AP) - U.S. immigration officials have decided that the Cuban father of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez has a right to custody of the boy, government officials said today. The boy must be returned by Jan. 14, according to officials familiar with the decision.
The U.S. decision, which would allow the boy, now in Miami, to be sent back to his father in Cuba, was to be announced today by Doris Meissner, commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.
But Meissner was not expected to immediately explain how the boy might actually be returned to his father because that question involves possible legal action outside the government's control, according to U.S. officials, who requested anonymity.
Congressional officials familiar with the decision, however, said that the INS would announce the Jan. 14 date had been set for the boy's return.
The ruling will hold that the boy's father, a hotel worker, has the legal authority to speak on behalf of the boy, the officials said. Details for how the boy should be returned will be left to the families involved, the officials said.
The boy was found clinging to an inner tube at sea after his mother died in a shipwreck while fleeing Cuba and heading to Florida.
In Cuba, the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, could not be reached for comment, and there was no immediate reaction from Cuba's communist government.
Armando Gutierrez, a spokesman for the boy's relatives living in Florida, said any decision to return the boy to Cuba would be appealed.
Should the boy's relatives sue, a ruling by Meissner in the father's favor would be a powerful weapon in his ability to prevail in court, the U.S. officials said.
These officials believe U.S. courts might conclude they had no jurisdiction over the case in light of such a ruling by Meissner.
Rather than explaining the details of the boy's return to his father in Cuba, the INS was expected to call on all members of the child's family to work together for a quick and easy return of the boy to his father, these officials said.
A woman who answered the phone at Gonzalez's house in the coastal town of Cardenas, a two-hour's drive east of Havana, said Gonzalez was not at home and she had no information about his whereabouts.
The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell of the National Council of Churches said before leaving Havana for New York this morning that Gonzalez and all four of Elian's grandparents had attended a late-night dinner in Havana with President Fidel Castro.
Elian was plucked from the ocean on Thanksgiving Day after his boat sank, killing his mother, stepfather and eight other people.
The boy's father has been trying to get him back ever since, saying his ex-wife didn't have permission to take the boy out of his communist homeland. He has had the backing of Castro, whose government has orchestrated giant demonstrations backing the father.
The boy has been treated as a cold war-style hero by anti-Castro groups in Miami, living in the glare of television cameras as he toured Orlando theme parks and enrolled Tuesday in first grade.
The Clinton administration asked the Cuban government this week to issue an exit visa to the father to allow him to personally escort the boy back home if immigration officials decide he should return to the island.
On Tuesday, Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly, said Cuba's government would not stop the father from going to the United States, but said he shouldn't go unless U.S. officials agree ahead of time to let the boy return to Cuba.
``He should do whatever he wants. And we will help him. But if I were him I would ask, for what reason: to finally return the boy, or to delay and delay'' the case even longer.
While Cuban adults who reach the U.S. mainland are routinely allowed to stay, the boy's age created diplomatic problems. Many Cuban exiles insist his mother's death in a bid to live in a free country was enough to allow Elian to stay, regardless of the desires of his Cuban relatives.
AP-NY-01-05-00 1131EST
Copyright 2000 The Associated Press |