By Alfonso Chardy. achardy@herald.com.
The Miami Herald, April 10,
2002.
In the days before the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service decided
to return Elián González to his father, senior INS officials
discussed granting asylum to the boy if they could show that the Cuban
government had coerced the father into demanding the child's return, according
to an internal INS memo shown to The Herald Tuesday.
The Dec. 29, 1999, memo, cited on the first day of a federal employee
grievance proceeding in Miami, also noted that some INS officials believed Elián's
father -- Juan Miguel González -- at one time sought an immigrant visa to
the United States and that his calls to his relatives in Little Havana might
have been monitored by the Cuban government. It's the first time this memo has
surfaced since the Elián saga began on Thanksgiving Day 1999.
Hand-scrawled notes at the bottom of the two-page memo said then-INS
Commissioner Doris Meissner ordered the destruction of the memo one day after it
was written when she learned of its existence. According to the notes, Meissner
ordered that no more discussions related to Elián be committed to
writing. The notes were signed by Rebeca Sánchez-Roig, an INS attorney at
the time and author of the memo.
Somehow a copy of the memo, in the form of an e-mail, survived and on
Tuesday was turned over to the U. S. Merit Systems Protection Board, an
independent, quasi-judicial agency that serves as an arbitration panel for
federal employee grievances against their agencies.
The commission began proceedings Tuesday on claims by INS agent Rick Ramírez
who said that the agency is retaliating against him for claiming that INS
officials harbored anti-Cuban feelings. Ramírez claimed that atmosphere
contributed to ''excessive force'' in the April 2000 raid in which Elián
was taken from the Little Havana home of his U.S. relatives and reunited with
his father.
Ramírez is seeking a transfer to another INS district, as well as a
finding by the board that the agency retaliated against him. A federal judge in
Miami dismissed Ramírez's lawsuit against INS last month. Ramírez
said he would appeal.
Elián, who was 6 at the time, arrived in the United States on
Thanksgiving Day 1999 on a makeshift boat, the sole survivor of a risky voyage
that killed his mother. Her death set the stage for an international custody
battle.
Meissner could not be reached for comment. But on Jan. 5, 2000, seven days
after the Sánchez-Roig memo was written, Meissner announced her decision
to return Elián to his father, concluding that the father was sincere in
his wish to have his son back.
Rodney Germain, an INS spokesman in Miami, said his agency will withhold
comment pending completion of the proceedings.
Richard Vitaris, the judge presiding over the proceedings at the Hyatt
Regency hotel in Miami, refused to admit the memo into evidence on the ground it
was not ''relevant'' to Ramírez's allegations because it was written
prior to the raid.
But Ramírez's attorney, Larry Klayman of the conservative legal
watchdog group Judicial Watch, said the memo showed that some INS officials
thought Elián deserved asylum since Cuba might have pressured his father.
The memo was turned over to the board by Diana Alvarez, an INS attorney who
testified on Ramírez's behalf.
The memo by Sánchez-Roig, whom Alvarez identified as a fellow INS
employee, summarized a conference call on the Elián case involving
several senior INS employees including Meissner.
The paragraph on whether Elián's father sought a visa to the United
States suggested that he had applied for the visa in an annual lottery for Cuban
nationals in Havana. U.S. officials have maintained they could not find any
record of Juan González's request.
The memo said: "It appears that the father had made an application
(potentially the lottery) to depart Cuba.''
On whether Elián deserved asylum, the memo said if coercion of Elián's
father could be shown INS could "potentially accept the child's asylum's
application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing
application. As such PA should proceed.''
PA appears to have been a reference to political asylum. |