By Carol Rosenberg, crosenberg@herald.com. Published Friday, January 21, 2000, in the Miami Herald
WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration remained firm Thursday that Elian Gonzalez should be united with his family in Cuba and pledged to respond next week to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Miami.
Both Attorney General Janet Reno in her weekly news conference and President Clinton in a newspaper interview made it clear they were not having second thoughts about the decision by the Immigration and Naturalization Service that only Elian's father in Cuba can speak for the boy.
``Law, morals, family values that we talk about -- all say that the bond between parent and child is one of the most sacred, one of the most important relationships there is,'' Reno said. ``I believe that with all my heart and soul with respect to the way I grew up. And if . . . I'd
inadvertently ended up in another land and was told I could not go home, I would have felt deprived.''
Clinton, in an interview published Thursday, told the Christian Science Monitor: ``. . . I think that we need to think long and hard whether we're going to take the position that any person who comes to our shores who is a minor, any minor child who loses his or her parents, should never be sent
home to another parent -- even if that parent is capable of doing a very good job -- if we don't like the government of the country where the people lived.''
NO THOUGHTS ON VETO
Clinton also said he did not believe Congress should get involved in the Elian battle, but he declined to say whether he would veto any effort by Congress to grant the boy U.S. citizenship. ``I haven't thought about it,'' he said.
Clinton added that the Elian case was far different from Congress' decision to confer honorary U.S. citizenship on Winston Churchill, for example. ``I don't think they [Congress] should put themselves in the position of making a decision that runs contrary to what the people who have had to do
all the investigation have done.''
A Justice Department source said the administration was still deciding just how it would counter the lawsuit filed in Miami by the relatives who have cared for Elian soon after he was found clinging to an inner tube off Fort Lauderdale Nov. 25. The suit names Reno and Immigration Commissioner
Doris Meissner as defendants and asks the court to order the INS to give the child a political asylum hearing.
ATTORNEYS' OPTIONS
Justice Department attorneys could argue that the court has no jurisdiction or they could challenge the lawsuit itself.
Reno and INS Commissioner Doris Meissner have said the child cannot have an asylum hearing because his legal guardian, his father, does not want the hearing.
Reno is monitoring every phase of the fight over Elian, officials said. Lawyers from the policy wing of Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder were directing the strategy planning and analysis, and briefing Reno frequently.
Justice sources also said the Office of the General Counsel also was still studying the subpoena issued Jan. 7 by Indiana Rep. Dan Burton, a Republican, who ordered the child to appear before his House Oversight Committee on Feb. 10 as a means of blocking his early return.
At issue is whether the government can ignore the subpoena, and still return the child to Cuba before that date.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |