The New York Times. January 6, 2000
The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service made a reasonable decision yesterday in ruling that Elián González, the 6-year-old boy who survived an ill-fated migrant smuggling trip across the Florida Straits, should be reunited with his father back in Cuba.
The decision will inflame anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, but Doris Meissner, the I.N.S. commissioner, made it clear that the service had followed established policy in the case. Moreover, by setting a Jan. 14 return date, the immigration service allowed Elián's American relatives time to
test the ruling in court.
Elián was one of 13 Cubans who were trying to cross from Cuba to Florida six weeks ago on a 17-foot aluminum powerboat when it capsized.
Ten of those on board drowned, including his mother and stepfather.
The boy clung to an inner tube for two days and was plucked from the Atlantic on Thanksgiving Day and brought ashore.
He was immediately released into the custody of relatives in Miami -- and just as quickly embraced as a pawn in the poisonous estrangement between Fidel Castro's regime and its opponents in exile.
This page has argued from the start that Elián not be denied due process because of his youth, and the I.N.S. appears to have moved carefully. Elián's great-uncle and other American relatives were allowed to make their case that he should have a life in Miami. The boy's divorced
father, Juan Miguel González, was also interviewed and satisfied the agency that he had a close and involved relationship with his son. The mother's parents also argued for a return to Cuba. The I.N.S. decided that under their prevailing policies, Mr. González met the test that calls
for custody reverting to the sole surviving parent in such cases.
"This little boy, who has been through so much, belongs with his father," Commissioner Meissner said yesterday, adding that "the unique relationship between parent and child and family reunification has long been a cornerstone of both immigration law and I.N.S. practice." The
White House quickly announced support for the decision.
It is unclear how the political side of this affair will play out.
Elián's relatives in Miami have indicated they plan to appeal, as is their right. Some of their more militant supporters in Miami, decrying the prospect that the boy will be used as a "trophy" by Mr. Castro, have indicated they may try to disrupt efforts to reunite Elián
with his father.
That would be treating the boy as a trophy in a diplomatic struggle that predates his birth by decades.
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