Taxpayers Get Bill for Cuban Boy’s Journey
ABC News. May 4, 2000
May 3 — While the emotional cost and political fallout of the Clinton administration’s decision to seize Elian Gonzalez are yet to be determined, the cost to the American taxpayer can be measured.
The bill is $762,000 according to the Department of Justice, for the costs of the Elian Gonzalez case through April 30. That price includes an early morning raid that took the 6-year-old boy from his Cuban-American relatives in Miami to a reunion with his father at Andrews Air Force Base,
travel expenses and legal fees.
The Justice Department said $420,000 was paid to the Immigration and Naturalization Service and $299,000 to the U.S. Marshals Service. Overtime to both those government agencies was calculated at $209,000 and travel expenses for employees of both agencies was estimated at about $312,000.
The cost of the swift predawn raid by heavily armed federal agents followed by the boy’s flight to Washington on a government jet with medical personnel aboard, all dubbed Operation Reunion, cost $229,686. That includes overtime, security, travel, transportation and equipment.
The early morning seizure put an end to the five-month standoff with the Miami relatives, who had been caring for Elian since the little boy was plucked from an inner tube in the Florida Straits last Thanksgiving Day. Elian’s mother and 10 others drowned when the boat in which they had
left Cuba sank.
The dramatic April 22 raid lasted only three minutes but has engendered enormous controversy.
Outrage and Gratitude
Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., both expressed outrage a day after the raid and called for public hearings.
But now, with polls showing public opinion running 2-to-1 in favor of the raid and against hearings, the GOP seems to have lost its enthusiasm for calling Attorney General Janet Reno and others to testify. A Senate hearing on the timing and tactics of the raid had been set for today, but
the likelihood of a congressional inquiry is now very much in doubt.
Last Friday, Senate Judiciary Committee Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, postponed a one-day inquiry originally scheduled for today. And House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who last month ordered a "preliminary inquiry" into the matter, appears no closer to going forward
with a full investigation.
On Tuesday, Lott appeared to signal a retreat, saying that there was not "very much momentum to begin with." And a number of Lott’s fellow Republican leaders echoed his sentiments. "I don’t necessarily think you have to have hearings to ask whether the Constitution
was upheld," House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts, R-Okla., told The Washingon Post.
Elian’s Fate Undecided
Currently, the boy remains with his father in a secluded compound on the Wye River, where he has been kept far from the political and legal storm that continues to swirl about him. Private funding sources are paying for his stay there.
But still, much remains undecided.
A Federal Appeals Court last week prolonged the legal battle when it refused to immediately consider a request by the boy’s father that he alone be allowed to legally represent the child on political asylum matters.
Had the request been granted, Juan Miguel Gonzalez could have immediately moved to drop the asylum request filed on Elian’s behalf by a great-uncle, effectively removing the Miami relatives from the case. Instead, the court said it would take up the issue on May 11, when it hears
arguments on Elian’s asylum claim.
And fallout from the seizure operation continues to change the political landscape of Miami. While those final costs will probably not be calculated until Election Day, more than 1,000 Miami-Dade County residents, most of Cuban descent who have previously voted as Democrats, have switched
their party affiliations in the two weeks since the raid.
And in Miami, shortly after the raid a strike called by Cuban-American leaders shuttered businesses in the city’s Little Havana section was also costly.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
Copyright ©2000 ABC News Internet Ventures. |