Posted at 8:59 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 31, 2000
Taxpayer costs soaring in Elian case
By Frances Robles. frobles@herald.com
WASHINGTON -- The federal government's tab for the Elian Gonzalez case has reached nearly $1.2 million -- including $606,000 on security.
The biggest chunk by far has gone toward travel for the dozens of U.S. marshals flown in to protect Elian Gonzalez and his family, who are staying in Washington while they await a court decision. A Justice Department report shows the government spent $233,000 on marshals' travel, plus $163,000
on overtime.
Budget reports show the marshals' cost was $299,000 through April 30. In the next two weeks, it doubled to total $606,000.
``The bottom line is that we have a job to do, and it will take fiscal amounts to do that,'' said U.S. Marshals Service spokesman Bill Likatovich. ``Is it expensive? We don't document things in those terms.''
The Immigration and Naturalization Service spent $535,000 through May 14, the most recent dates for which costs are available. The INS costs were mostly for travel and transportation, but also included $102,000 for Miami employee overtime.
The bills are in addition to $4 million spent locally on police overtime. Miami and Miami-Dade Police had hoped to get their millions back from either the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the Justice Department.
``There are limited circumstances under which municipalities can seek reimbursement,'' Justice Department spokeswoman Carole Florman said. ``I don't know the rules well enough to say, but I know when this first came up it was considered unlikely.''
By May 14, the U.S. government had its own tab to pay: $1.186 million.
Authors analyze Miami Cubans
Book examines cultural history
By Jack Wheat. jwheat@herald.com
Just when the Elian Gonzalez drama has people around the country asking what's going on in Miami, two local researchers and the Rutgers University Press have produced a detailed, scholarly answer -- Cuban Miami.
``Cubans here feel more Cuban than Cubans on the island,'' said co-author Moises Asis, a Cuban lawyer and scientist who moved to Miami in 1993. ``In a way, Miami is a museum of Cuba.''
Unique in the annals of American immigration, the Miami experience is about the wholesale transfer of a culture, said co-author Robert Levine, director of the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Miami.
The one million Cubans who have ended up in Miami since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959 didn't simply bring ethnic food, memorabilia and rituals. They reassembled pre-Castro Cuban society, complete with its ethnic fissures and class conflict, the researchers said.
SLOW ASSIMILATION
While the Americanization of Cuban exiles occurs on a large scale in Miami, it's at a slower pace than that of other immigrants elsewhere, Levine said.
Greater Miami offers enclaves where people can live out their lives in Cuban culture. It provides entry ramps for Cubans who want to be part of mainstream American culture. And people who want a hybrid Cuban-American culture can find it in Miami.
But moving back and forth between cultures is a stressful business, Levine said: ``That's what's coming out with Elian.''
Through serendipitous timing, Levine and Asis have produced the first academic book to deal with the Elian controversy, an issue certain to intrigue scholars of law, immigration and ethnic studies for decades.
They finished Cuban Miami, which includes more than 180 photos and cartoons, last July. It was in production at the Rutgers Press when Elian was rescued at sea in November.
``I called the press and begged them to insert a paragraph about Elian,'' Levine said.
The scholars were able to get in two paragraphs that keep the book current.
SYMBOLIZED ANGUISH
``Elian's case engulfed Miami as the year 2000 opened,'' they wrote. ``The child-custody impasse symbolized the anguish of decades of family divisions.''
``The book came at a timely moment,'' Asis said. ``It'll help heal misunderstanding between Cubans and other communities.''
He added, ``I hope it will.''
``It's a very useful book,'' said Luis Martinez-Fernandez, chairman of Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies at Rutgers.
``It provides the Cuban community with a human voice and human face. It's a community that, because of circumstances, has lent itself to caricature,'' said Martinez-Fernandez, editor of the forthcoming Encyclopedia on Cuba and the Cuban People.
``When people talk about the Cuban community, it's presented . . . usually in very negative terms without any understanding of the complexities of that community and the painful process that led to their displacement and relocation,'' said Martinez-Fernandez, who is Cuban.
Faget found guilty of revealing secret
Ex-INS official faces prison
By David Kidwell. dkidwell@herald.com
Mariano Faget, a 34-year employee of the Immigration and Naturalization Service who admits he told a friend a government secret, was convicted Tuesday under federal espionage laws for disclosing classified government information.
He could be sentenced to more than five years in prison and will lose his $47,000-per-year lifelong government pension, an automatic penalty under any conviction for espionage.
Faget, 54, lowered his head but remained expressionless as the verdict was read Tuesday afternoon. He was charged under the U.S. Espionage Act and convicted on four counts: disclosing classified information, converting it for his own gain, lying to the FBI, and failing to disclose ``foreign
business contacts'' on his security clearance application.
His family left the courthouse in tears, outraged, and without comment as they made their way to their cars through a throng of television cameras.
``Nothing was taken into consideration about my husband's service to his country. He was like a straight pin for 34 years,'' Faget's wife, Maria, said later by telephone. ``And those [expletive] 12 people can't see it because of their racism, and that's the way it is.''
Four jurors were black, seven were Hispanic -- including six of Cuban descent -- and one was white, non-Hispanic.
``Nothing about what we did had anything to do with race,'' said one juror, who asked that she not be named. ``We all felt a lot of sympathy for him as a person. He seemed like an upstanding man, but given the facts we were presented with, we had no choice.''
The case against Faget began as an FBI investigation of a suspected Cuban spy ring and evolved into a tale of economic espionage in an alleged plot to violate the U.S. embargo. In the end, it centered on a cellular telephone call made to a lifelong friend.
``Mariano Faget was supplying information to a friend of his in order to gain an economic advantage in doing business with Cuba,'' prosecutor Richard Gregorie said, following the verdict.
He suggested South Florida may see an increase in similar charges against anyone who breaks the law looking to cash in on the end of Fidel Castro's communist regime.
``We don't know what lies ahead,'' Gregorie said. ``But people are trying to get in on the ground floor, and when laws are broken in the process you can bet we will be watching it closely.''
Faget first became a spy suspect in February 1999 when government agents saw him in a friendly meeting at a Miami bar with Luis Molina, a Cuban diplomat classified by the FBI as a ``known Cuban intelligence officer.''
In October, agents witnessed another meeting with another ``known'' Cuban spy. Still uncertain what Faget's relationship was to these men, agents decided to run a sting -- in spy parlance, a ``dangle'' -- to pin it down.
SECRET REQUEST
On Feb. 11, FBI Special Agent in Charge Hector Pesquera made an unprecedented appearance in Faget's INS office with a top-secret request. Pesquera told Faget a high-level Cuban official was defecting and needed INS paperwork. Pesquera showed Faget a photograph of the defector. It was Luis
Molina.
``Let me tell you something,'' Faget told Pesquera while cameras secretly rolled. ``I don't know if this is going to make a difference, I've met this guy before. . . . He was at the Interests Section in Cuba, in Washington, D.C., and I went to a dinner here one day and he happened to be there.''
``That's it?'' Pesquera said. ``That's your only contact with him?''
``That's the only contact.'' Faget now acknowledges it was a lie. He had met Molina on at least three occasions, and twice alone.
Faget now claims the discussions in those meetings centered on his corporation, America Cuba Inc., a company formed to build distribution contacts for American retailers looking to enter Cuban after the U.S. embargo is lifted.
Pesquera shrugged off Faget's comments, and told him he would send an agent to take a report. Pesquera, who repeatedly emphasized the secrecy of the bogus defection, then left. But agents continued to watch.
TWELVE MINUTES
Faget waited exactly 12 minutes to dig his private cell phone from his briefcase and telephone his America Cuba partner, Pedro Font, with the news.
Faget says he wanted to warn Font about the defection before his scheduled meeting with members of the Cuban Interests Section. He says his only motive was to protect his friend, not to pass along government secrets.
``I would like to be as sure of going to heaven as I am of that,'' said Faget's attorney, Ed O'Donnell, after the verdict Tuesday. ``This is a man who has no acrimony for anyone. He's a decent man who made a mistake and the jury saw fit to see it as a crime. So be it.''
Prosecutors argued that Faget intended Font to use the information to curry favor with the Cubans and build business contacts.
Faget has 10 days to appeal the verdict.
``Mariano Faget is one of the most amazing men I have ever met,'' O'Donnell said. ``He's totally at peace with himself. . . . He knows who Mariano Faget is and his only concern right now is for his family.''
The juror said there was debate during deliberations over the credibility of Faget's story, but in the end, his motive was irrelevant: ``Yes, maybe his intent was not to do it to hurt the country, but at the same time you have to read the letter of the law.''
Three other jurors reached by telephone declined to discuss the case.
Federal sentencing guidelines call for a sentence of between 62 and 75 months. U.S. District Judge Alan Gold set sentencing for 10 a.m. Aug. 18.
Video depicts violence at sea
Coast Guard: Migrants unruly
BY MARIKA LYNCH mlynch@herald.com
The U.S. Coast Guard said its encounters at sea are becoming increasingly violent as Cuban immigrants -- facing a certain return to Cuba if caught in the ocean -- fight aggressively to evade captures.
A case in point: a video of a May 25 confrontation that shows 12 Cuban men wielding a machete and pelting a Coast Guard Cutter with dozens of rocks and bolts.
That confrontation is one of 13 in the past year where Cuban migrants violently tried to ward off the Coast Guard -- or hurt themselves -- to avoid being returned to their homeland, Lt. Commander Ron LaBrec, Coast Guard spokesman said.
``This is a frequent and frightening occurrence, LaBrec said, of what the agency considers a trend on the rise among Cuban immigrants since 1998 . ``Migrants apparently believe this behavior will increase their chances of reaching shore. That belief is unfounded and dangerous.
Indeed the men in the video were returned to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba Tuesday morning.
Over the past year, some Cuban men and women have poured gasoline on themselves and threatened to light a match in order to keep cutters away. One slit his wrist with a soda can in a failed attempt to get a trip to the United States for medical attention, where under U.S. immigration rules he
would likely have been allowed to stay.
Coast Guard officials often cite these incidents to explain the dicey situations they encounter on the seas, and to defend the tactics they use to detain immigrants -- like the June 1999 incident off Surfside where Coast Guard officials doused six men in a raft with pepper spray to keep them
offshore. The images angered many and sparked protests.
But by the Coast Guard's own statistics, however, fewer than 10 percent of the 1,412 interdictions in the past year involve violence. And Tuesday, some immigration experts and activists said the resistance depicted in the video is a result of the 6-year-old wet foot/dry foot policy, where only
Cubans who reach land are allowed to stay in the United States. Those interdicted at sea are sent back. The law, they say, makes the Coast Guard use force to stop the migrants before they reach shore.
``The [Coast Guard's] reaction to these people is more violent, and when the Coast Guard reacts in a violent way, they are going to defend themselves, said Wilfredo Allen, an immigration attorney challenging the policy in court.
Jose Basulto, leader of Brothers to the Rescue, called the video a ploy by the Coast Guard to justify action against Cubans.
Majority should rule
Max J. Castro
Is there is a silent majority of Cuban-American moderates whose views differ significantly from those put forth by leading exile organizations as the opinions of the whole community? Or do the more-liberal voices represent a minuscule and nearly irrelevant minority? This has been analyzed for a
long time, but current policy debates and recent events have lent it renewed interest.
Americans believe in democracy, and democratic theory assumes that public policy generally will reflect popular sentiments, although the principle doesn't apply when majority rule interferes with individual rights. Determining majorities and minorities is not simple; it partly depends on how one
defines the relevant universe, which is determined by the nature of the issue.
For example, the question of U.S. policy on Cuba is a national issue, therefore, the relevant universe is made up of American voters. Recent na- tional polls show that most Americans favor lifting the embargo and restoring diplomatic relations, while local polls show that Cuban Americans don't
share that view. A democratic theory based on majority rule would say that the views of the 0.4 percent of the U.S. population composed by Cuban Americans should not prevail over the views of the other 99.6 percent. Yet U.S. policy on Cuba reflects the small minority's views more than the
majority's. It's a violation of democratic principles.
However, when it comes to local legislation, such as Miami-Dade County's Cuba ordinance, conservative Cuban-American views become more relevant from the standpoint of majority because Cuban Americans represent a big chunk of this universe. But, still, Cuban Americans do not constitute a majority
in Miami-Dade County, and it's pretty clear that most non-Cubans oppose the Cuba ordinance. Moreover, popular will is relevant only to the degree that the ordinance does not contradict constitutional principles, including the First Amendment and role of the federal government in foreign policy.
Finally, on questions of cultural expression, it's far from clear that a hard-line policy expresses the views of most Cuban Americans.
What's the basis for this last statement? The most comprehensive survey of the opinions of Cuban Americans in Miami is still Florida International University's 1997 Cuba poll. It found that 78 percent of Cuban Americans supported the embargo. On this issue, clearly there was no silent majority
of Cuban liberals. But there was a substantial silent minority composed of 22 percent of Cuban-American embargo opponents overall. This minority receives zero air time on traditional Cuban radio stations. This systematic, undemocratic exclusion elicits no protest from those who clamor for fair
representation of hard-line Cuban views in the English-speaking media.
HARD LINE ON EMBARGO
More relevant to the cultural-freedom question, when the FIU poll asked respondents whether they supported the informal but effective ban observed by local Cuban radio stations against playing recordings produced on the island, 53 percent opposed the ban while 47 percent supported it.
The results were similar when a question was asked about the removal from the Calle Ocho program of a Puerto Rican performer who had fraternized publicly with a controversial singer who lives in Cuba. The conclusion: Most Cuban Americans are hard line when it comes to the embargo, but an
emerging majority favors a more-open policy when it comes to the realm of cultural expression.
Thus, when you focus on the appropriate national or local level for decision-making based on majority rule and, from that vantage point, look at the policies on Cuba of the United States and Miami-Dade County, you reach one conclusion: These policies represent the views of an entrenched minority
that should not be allowed to continue to exercise veto power over the will of the majority.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |