The Rush to Nab Elian

0 Comments | Insight on the News, May 22, 2000 | by Reed Irvine

The Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS, clearly was obeying White House orders when it broke down doors of Lazaro Gonzalez's Miami home and snatched Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint from the arms of Donato Dalrymple, the man who had plucked him from the sea. The Associated Press photo of the helmeted, begoggled federal agent pointing his assault weapon at the crying child and the stunned fisherman symbolizes how desperate Bill Clinton was to bring closure to the Elian saga by sending the boy back to Cuba.

What most of the on-air discussion of this chilling incident has missed is that the big rush to get Elian out of the hands of his Miami relatives was driven by the appellate-court ruling that under our immigration law there is no minimum age required for a person who is applying for asylum. The court rebuked the government for not having followed its own rules in Elian's case. It arbitrarily had decided that only the father could decide whether his son should seek asylum in this country. The court noted that an application for asylum for Elian had been filed.

Pointing out that the government had not held any hearing on Elian's petition and that its agents never had interviewed the boy, the court issued a temporary injunction barring it from returning Elian to Cuba. It set May 11 as the date on which it would hear arguments. Fearing that the court would rule favorably on Elian's request for asylum, Attorney General Janet Reno acted to remove the boy from the home of his Miami relatives and hand him over to his father as quickly as possible.

The INS had decided on Nov. 30, 1999, that it would leave it to the family courts in Florida to decide whether returning Elian to Cuba would be in his best interest. Asked why the Justice Department later had switched to the position that he should be returned to his father, Reno said that, at the time INS made that decision, the father had not expressed his wishes on the matter and that when he subsequently did so, the INS was obliged to respect his wishes. That is one of many lies that senior U.S. officials have told in discussing their handling of this case.

On Nov. 29, 1999, the Miami Herald reported that the father and the Cuban government had demanded that Elian be returned to Cuba. They had filed a complaint with the United Nations to call attention to this demand. The Miami relatives say that their telephone records prove that Juan Miguel Gonzalez called them on Nov. 22, 1999, to tell them that his wife and son had left Cuba for Florida. He did nothing to stop them. This suggests that the demand that the boy be sent back to Cuba was not his idea. It was certainly not his idea to complain to the United Nations.

The father has given only one interview. Dan Rather, Fidel Castro's favorite American TV interviewer, was selected for the honor. Rather asked Juan Miguel Gonzales this one question he didn't want to answer: "What do you consider to be liberty and opportunity?" Pressed for an answer, Juan Miguel Gonzalez said, "Freedom is, for example, in Cuba where education and health care is free." That is Castro's major propaganda theme. Castro throws his voice and the words come out of Juan Miguel Gonzalez's mouth. On April 13, Janet Reno said she had proposed that Elian and the Miami family go to Washington to meet privately with Elian's father and try to work things out. If they could not, they would have to hand Elian over to his father. She said it was up to them to ensure that the transition happens in the best and least traumatic way. The Miami relatives proposed a long visit with Juan Miguel Gonzalez's at a compound in Florida. Aaron Podhurst, a Miami attorney who was one of the mediators involved in the negotiations, has said that the entire leadership of the Cuban-American community had agreed to the proposal that the families meet privately in Washington, as Reno had proposed. Podhurst said he was on the phone with Reno, still negotiating, until he was put on hold. It was then that Reno's raiders broke into Lazaro Gonzalez's home at 5:15 a.m.

Because it might take time to reorient Elian, the government wanted him to be handed over to his father well before the May 11 court date. It chose the most traumatic way to do this because it was the fastest. One oversight marred the operation: The agents took out NBC's TV cameraman, but they missed photographer Alan Diaz. His unforgettable photo is now part of the Clinton legacy.

Reed Irvine is the chairman of Accuracy in Media, a press watchdog group in Washington.