WG: internet resources on Elian Gonzales news

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arno tausch

> ----------
> Von:  center@cis.org[SMTP:center@cis.org]
> Gesendet:     Freitag, 14. Januar 2000 21:32
> An:   CISNEWS@cis.org
> Betreff:      Elian Gonzales news
> 
> 
> [For CISNEWS subscribers: Four items --
> 
> * Federal court believed to favor the INS over Elian's family;
> * Custody case could strengthen relations with Cuba;
> * Most refugees don't get such VIP treatment; and
> * Little Havana fustrated by political battle.
> 
> -- Mark Krikorian]
> 
> 
> Legal sides in Elian saga fine-tuning next moves
> By Jay Weaver and Andres Viglucci
> Miami Herald, January 14, 2000
> 
> U.S. immigration authorities, suspicious that lawyers for Elian Gonzalez's
> Miami relatives will try to avoid directly challenging a decision to
> return
> the boy to Cuba, are devising strategies to force the family into federal
> court, where the government is certain it will prevail.
> 
> Publicly, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno sounded a conciliatory note on
> Thursday, once more appealing to the boy's relatives in Miami to cooperate
> in reuniting Elian with his father in Cuba.
> 
> ''I think it is so important that people of good will come together, work
> through the processes of law as soon as possible, and get the boy home to
> his father,'' she said, declining to spell out the government's options
> while reiterating that she has ruled out seizing the boy.
> 
> But behind the scenes, Justice Department officials said, government
> lawyers are readying a plan to call the family lawyers' bluff if they fail
> to fulfill their threat to go to federal court next week to block Elian's
> return.
> 
> Legal strategists believe the Miami lawyers are reluctant to take the
> matter to federal court because they recognize the chances of winning
> there
> are slim. Federal courts have long deferred to the attorney general's
> broad
> powers in enforcing immigration laws.
> 
> ''Clearly we want to give the family in Miami an opportunity to carry out
> what they say they have wanted to do, which is to take the matter into
> court,'' one Justice official said. ''However, if their public statements
> are not backed up, and they engage in stalling tactics, we will certainly
> not let the matter just sit.''
> 
> Precise tactics have not been decided, the official said. The Immigration
> and Naturalization Service has clearly been at pains to avoid coming off
> as
> heavy-handed.
> 
> But the INS set the stage for one possible scenario late Thursday when it
> rejected a second request for political asylum filed on Elian's behalf by
> his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez. The agency again ruled, as it had last
> week, that only Elian's father in Cuba, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, can act for
> the boy.
> 
> The agency believes the rejection may trigger a challenge in federal court
> by the Miami relatives' attorneys, who called the INS decision ''another
> example of violating Elian's civil rights.''
> 
> ''We intend to do it,'' said Spencer Eig, a member of the family's legal
> team. ''This case evolves every day.'' He declined further comment.
> 
> If they don't, the agency could force the Miami lawyers' hand by issuing a
> demand that the family turn over the boy at a precise date and time,
> knowing full well they are unlikely to do so. The family's lawyers have
> already said they would disregard an INS request to surrender the boy.
> 
> But legal experts say a demand to produce the boy, if ignored, could lead
> to a swift federal court order forcing the family to comply.
> 
> ''In the absence of cooperation from the relatives, the INS could go to
> federal court to have a judge make Elian appear so that he can be reunited
> with his father,'' University of Miami law professor David Abraham said.
> 
> Alternatively, a request to produce the boy could prompt the family's
> lawyers to seek to block it in federal court, the only venue for such a
> challenge.
> 
> In any case, legal experts and the government believe, INS is likely to
> prevail: ''At the end of the day, the world will see they didn't have much
> of a case, but at least they got a chance to make it in court,'' Abraham
> said.
> 
> Justice strategists believe that neither the family nor its lawyers would
> risk defying a federal judicial order.
> 
> ''There is a great deal of rhetoric, but the reality is that we believe
> everyone involved in this process will respect the final outcome under the
> law,'' the Justice official said.
> 
> After saying he would discuss the team's strategy, Roger Bernstein, an
> attorney for the Miami relatives, failed to return phone calls from The
> Herald to his office.
> 
> LAWYERS DISAGREE
> 
> There has been disagreement among the lawyers representing Elian's
> relatives regarding when or even whether to go to federal court,
> recognizing they could be walking through a legal trapdoor.
> 
> Earlier in the day, another of the family's lawyers, Jose Garcia-Pedrosa,
> said in defiant tones that he had advised Lazaro Gonzalez not to turn over
> the boy.
> 
> Garcia-Pedrosa contended in an interview that an emergency protective
> order
> granted by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge legally keeps Elian here until
> a March 6 hearing on temporary custody sought by his great-uncle, even
> though Reno on Wednesday rejected the judge's authority to do so.
> 
> Garcia-Pedrosa also maintained that a congressional subpoena for Elian,
> issued by U.S. Rep. Dan Burton, R-Ind., also prevents the boy from leaving
> the country.
> 
> ''My advice now to Lazaro is, 'If they come to get the boy, the answer is
> no,' '' Garcia-Pedrosa said. ''We have a state court order and we have a
> congressional subpoena that say the boy should not be taken from this
> jurisdiction. INS has no right to take this boy from here. We are not
> going
> to surrender him.''
> 
> Supporters of Elian's Miami family have all but conceded that their
> principal goal is to delay the boy's return until Congress can reconvene
> Jan. 24 and consider several proposals to grant him legal status in the
> United States.
> 
> WEIGHING OPTIONS
> 
> U.S. Rep Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, said Thursday that several members
> of Congress are trying to hammer out a single piece of legislation to
> grant
> Elian legal standing. That would likely remove the INS' jurisdiction over
> the case.
> 
> ''It's difficult to accomplish, but it's a bipartisan group of folks
> working on it, said Ros-Lehtinen, who said the group is now focusing on
> plans other than granting Elian citizenship. U.S. Rep. Bob Menendez,
> D-N.J., has suggested that permanent legal residency status for Elian
> would
> be more viable.
> 
> In the meantime, Miami street-protest leaders said they would not call any
> new demonstrations to allow time for the expected court battle. Activist
> Ramon Saul Sanchez said exiles would join marches by African Americans on
> Saturday and Monday in observation of Martin Luther King Day.
> 
> ''A lot of people wanted to continue to protest, and we were able to
> persuade them not to because it doesn't make sense now,'' Sanchez said.
> 
> FATHER ON TV
> 
> In an interview with ABC's Nightline  broadcast late Thursday, Elian's
> father expressed extreme frustration with the delay in his son's return.
> ''The custody of the child is mine,'' he said. ''The courts in Miami or in
> the U.S. have no jurisdiction. What they have to do is send the child back
> to me. I think that this has been clarified more than once.''
> 
> The Cuban government said it expects 100,000 mothers to march by the
> building housing the U.S. Interests Section in Havana today to demand
> Elian's return.
> 
> Raquel Rodriguez, Elian's maternal grandmother, told MSNBC in an interview
> that exiles pressing for the boy to remain in Miami have ignored her pain:
> ''I lost my only daughter and he's my only grandson. He's the only thing I
> have. I feel horrible.''
> 
> The boy's mother and 10 others perished when their boat foundered off
> Florida.
> 
> In Miami, after Elian returned home from school Thursday afternoon -- one
> hour later than usual because he stayed behind for an intensive English
> lesson -- Lazaro Gonzalez delivered to reporters one of his most heartfelt
> statements about the boy.
> 
> ''The reason why I'm in this is because the child has to have an
> opportunity to be free, that's how his mother would have wanted it,''
> Lazaro Gonzalez said. ''The question I always ask is, if the father is
> really interested in being with his child, why doesn't he make an effort
> to
> come here?''
> 
> 
> ********
> ********
> 
> Elian's Case Seen Helping Relations
> By Anita Snow 
> January 13, 2000
> 
> HAVANA, Cuba (AP) -- The custody flap over 6-year-old Elian Gonzales could
> ultimately strengthen U.S.-Cuba relations if American officials stand firm
> and do not succumb to political pressure, a former American diplomat to
> Havana said Thursday.
> 
> "The federal government is doing the right thing by standing by the INS
> decision," said Wayne Smith, referring to the U.S. Immigration and
> Naturalization Service.
> 
> "I am not so sure that would have been the case several years ago," said
> Smith, who was chief of the U.S. Interests Section for three years under
> Presidents Reagan and Carter.
> 
> Attorney General Janet Reno earlier Thursday urged those involved in the
> dispute over the Cuban boy to resolve the situation quickly so the child
> "can get on with his life."
> 
> Reno has backed the INS determination that the boy be returned to his
> father in Cuba, and has said that Florida state courts have no say in the
> federal matter.
> 
> "I think that over the long term this case will actually help relations
> between Washington and Havana," said Smith, because American officials
> have
> not been swayed by Cuban exiles in Miami who want the child to remain in
> the United States.
> 
> The battle over Elian, Smith said, is not between two governments but
> between two ideological camps on differing sides of the Florida Straits:
> in
> Miami and Havana.
> 
> Elian was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast on
> Thanksgiving Day. His mother and 10 others died in an attempt to emigrate
> to the United States.
> 
> The boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, has demanded that the child be
> returned to him in Cuba. But Elian's Miami relatives say they can give him
> a better life off the communist island and are fighting to keep him in the
> United States.
> 
> The Cuban American National Foundation, a powerful Miami-based exile
> group,
> in 1996 won a libel suit against Smith after he accused the organization
> of
> using taxpayer money for political campaigns. The verdict was reversed on
> appeal last year.
> 
> Smith, in Havana with a Johns Hopkins University study group, said Cuban
> exiles may be hurt most by the battle as more Americans side with the U.S.
> government's decision to send the boy home.
> 
> "We could see a further loss of the exiles' political power," he said.
> "The
> exiles already are in this alone as polls in the United States indicate a
> great majority of Americans think he should be back with his father."
> 
> Also Thursday, a delegation of American agricultural firms wrapped up a
> four-day visit to Cuba, calling for a lifting of U.S. restrictions on food
> and medicine sales here.
> 
> Among delegation members was former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture John
> Block, who served under Reagan and is now president of the Food
> Distributors International, an association of food wholesalers interested
> in working with small private family cooperatives in Cuba.
> 
> "In years past as secretary of agriculture, I negotiated trade agreements
> with the Soviet Union when it was with the Evil Empire," Block told
> reporters during a tour of farms. "Now we cannot even trade with a country
> 90 miles from our shores."
> 
> 
> ********
> ********
> 
> Elian's VIP Treatment Unusual
> By David Crary
> January 13, 2000
> 
> NEW YORK (AP) -- The VIP treatment lavished on 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez
> contrasts starkly with the way most youngsters who reach the United States
> without parents or paperwork are handled.
> 
> Most are rapidly deported. Others spend bewildering weeks in detention.
> 
> As Elian's Cuban-American hosts took him to Walt Disney World last month,
> a
> lawyer in Portland, Ore., was fighting for the release of a 15-year-old
> Chinese girl held in a juvenile jail for seven months. At one hearing,
> said
> lawyer Mark Potter, the girl couldn't wipe away tears because her hands
> were chained to her waist.
> 
> "Her only crime was that her parents put her on a boat so she could get a
> better life over here," Potter said.
> 
> At facilities across the United States, scores of other young,
> unaccompanied aliens are held at detention centers, sometimes for months
> and often without an attorney to help resolve their fate. Human rights and
> immigrant rights groups are pressing the Immigration and Naturalization
> Service to halt the practice and use other housing options.
> 
> "The INS is genuinely trying to find alternatives to detention. But it's
> painfully slow," said Ralston Deffenbaugh, a former human rights lawyer
> who
> is president of the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
> Service.
> 
> "It's still shocking that kids under 18 who are not criminals, who don't
> pose a danger to anybody, are being held behind bars. There's no reason we
> ought to be doing that."
> 
> The INS, which handles more than 4,000 unaccompanied minors a year, says
> the vast majority are promptly sent back to their families. The agency
> insists there are sound reasons for detaining the others.
> 
> "The only juveniles kept in detention are those who pose some threat to
> themselves and others, or juveniles who are at risk," INS spokesman Russ
> Bergeron said Thursday.
> 
> Elian's case is fundamentally different because, as a Cuban reaching U.S.
> soil, he has an automatic right under the law to seek U.S. citizenship.
> The
> boy - whose mother drowned during an ill-fated voyage from Cuba to Florida
> in November - is also unusual among young aliens in having two camps of
> relatives seeking custody of him.
> 
> Bergeron said the INS often takes charge of children who have been
> orphaned
> or abandoned by their parents, and seeks temporary lodgings for them,
> either with relatives or a foster family. In Elian's case, the INS turned
> him over to relatives in Miami who oppose his return to his father in
> Cuba.
> 
> In contrast to Elian, some of the unaccompanied children who spend long
> periods in detention centers belong to criminal gangs. And some, like many
> young Chinese, are detained for their own safety because the smugglers who
> brought them into the country might track them down to demand payment for
> the trip, Bergeron said. He said some Chinese children released from INS
> custody have been beaten, raped and abducted for ransom.
> 
> Advocacy groups acknowledge these children may face threats, but contend
> they could be held safely in foster homes or group homes.
> 
> "Under what circumstances do you put somebody in jail to protect them?"
> asked Annie Wilson, a vice president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
> Service. "We think that's garbage."
> 
> Wilson said some children are classified as troublemakers simply because
> they don't understand English. "They don't do what a guard tells them,
> they
> don't behave well sometimes, and you have the INS making a determination
> that they're a danger to society," she said.
> 
> The Chinese girl represented by Potter was among 105 people detained off
> the coast of Guam last April. Along with a few other youths, she was
> brought to Portland and eventually won political asylum based on the claim
> that she would face persecution in China.
> 
> Even after gaining asylum, though, she spent six more weeks in detention
> before being placed with a foster family. For her protection, her name and
> the identity of the family are being withheld.
> 
> Potter is indignant that the Chinese youths were handcuffed during court
> appearances.
> 
> "The girl was crying, and she couldn't wipe the tears coming down her
> face," he said. "It was one of the most wrenching and disturbing
> experiences I've had as a lawyer."
> 
> Like other immigrants, children in INS custody are not entitled to
> publicly
> funded lawyers. Some obtain an attorney through relatives, and others
> through legal-aid programs, but advocacy groups say many never get a
> lawyer
> and face language barriers during their legal proceedings.
> 
> "The outcome of their cases really depends on access to counsel," said
> Michael Bochenek, counsel to the children's rights division of Human
> Rights
> Watch. "The kids who don't know what their rights are are most likely to
> be
> sent home."
> 
> 
> ********
> ********
> 
> Little Havana Facing Rare Prospect: Not Having Its Way
> By Laurie Goering 
> Chicago Tribune, January 14, 2000
> 
> MIAMI -- Standing amid the richly pungent boxes of imported cigars that
> fill his shop along Little Havana's famous Calle Ocho, Enrique Vilar
> shakes
> his head in frustration at the fight over 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez.
> 
> "I really don't know how this is all going to end," says the longtime
> Cuban
> exile. "It's getting too big and international, and every day things get
> more complicated."
> 
> He hasn't lost sight of who is at the real center of the political
> whirlwind, though.
> 
> "He's right out there," Vilar says, gesturing south through the store's
> plate glass window, toward Cuba and Fidel Castro.
> 
> These are frustrating times in Little Havana. The right-wing Miami Cuban
> exile community that has long shaped U.S. foreign policy toward the island
> is shocked to find that for once it might have to bend to the will of
> Washington.
> 
> The Immigration and Naturalization Service, meanwhile, accustomed to
> having
> the final word on immigration disputes, finds itself in the uncomfortable
> position of perhaps lacking the political gumption to carry out its own
> order and send Elian back to Cuba and his father.
> 
> "My hope is that people will look at this little boy and get him into a
> situation where he can live a normal life without television cameras and
> the world in his face," Atty. Gen. Janet Reno said Thursday.
> 
> "I think it is so important that people of good will come together, work
> through the processes of the law as soon as possible, and get the boy home
> to his father," she said at a weekly Justice Department briefing.
> 
> Lawyers for the boy's extended Miami family, however, promised that under
> no circumstances would they consider releasing him to the INS and his
> father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, prior to a full federal court hearing.
> 
> "I don't think this is a power struggle," said Ninoska Perez, a
> spokeswoman
> for the right-wing Cuban American National Foundation in Miami. "What
> we're
> simply trying to do is make it clear that just because Cuba wants him back
> doesn't mean he should be sent without taking into account his own
> interests. He should be heard."
> 
> Even that might add to the confusion. This week, a television crew caught
> Elian watching from the yard of his great-uncle's home in Little Havana as
> a plane passed overhead. The boy turned to a playmate and exclaimed
> either,
> "I want to go back to Cuba" or "I don't want to go back to Cuba,"
> depending
> on which side of the dispute is interpreting the tape, in Spanish.
> 
> "All this talk about the boy's day in court and due process for Elian is
> just a smoke screen for seizing custody from the father," said David
> Abraham, a University of Miami law professor.
> 
> "What I find remarkable is that (the Cuban exile community) has always
> accused Cuba's communist government--often rightly--of breaking up
> families
> and trampling on individuals for political expediency.
> 
> "Now here we have people who are prepared to rip a 6-year-old from his
> sole
> surviving parent and four grandparents all to make the point that Cuba is
> a
> terrible place. They're committing exactly the same vices they accuse the
> other side of having."
> 
> Along Calle Ocho, at the heart of Little Havana, Cuban-Americans insist
> their intention is only to protect Elian and give him a better life than
> he
> could find in Cuba.
> 
> "Cuba's a jail. Here Elian will have every opportunity," said Tony
> Cabrera,
> a gray-smocked barber who fled Havana in 1962. "People don't understand
> why
> we are in the streets over this, but it is all about freedom."
> 
> Elian was rescued Nov. 25 from an inner tube adrift in the Atlantic Ocean,
> hours after his mother, Elisabet Broton Rodriguez, and 10 other Cuban
> migrants drowned after their boat capsized.
> 
> The boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who was separated from Elian's
> mother, has said he wants his son back. Although the INS believes the plea
> is honest, Miami's Cuban exiles suspect the father made the demand largely
> due to pressure from Castro's government.
> 
> "People in Cardenas (Elian's hometown) say the boy's father was shopping
> around a few months ago, trying to find a boat to come to Miami," Perez
> charged. "Now he's standing with a photo of (revolutionary fighter) Che
> (Guevara) at his back, reading a Cuban script. I think the man is not
> saying what he really feels. We've seen it happen before."
> 
> Besides determining the boy's fate, the high-profile case has the
> potential
> to reshape the balance of power between the exiles and Washington on Cuba
> policy.
> 
> For decades, wealthy Cuban exiles--mostly in Miami but also in New
> Jersey--have managed to strongly influence U.S. policy on Cuba, mainly
> through political campaign contributions and a perceived ability to
> deliver
> a key bloc of votes.
> 
> That power has persisted despite opinion polls in recent years that show
> most Americans oppose current U.S. policy on Cuba and would like, among
> other things, to see sanctions against the island lifted.
> 
> A new CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll also shows that 52 percent of Americans
> support the INS and believe Elian should go back to Cuba, compared to 32
> percent who believe he should stay in Miami.
> 
> "There have been small things this administration and others have done
> that
> haven't made the exile community happy, but this is the first big public
> fight," said Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst at the Virginia-based Lexington
> Institute.
> 
> "The INS figured that, once they had the information that the father had a
> relationship with Elian and wanted him back, this was an open and shut
> case. But now there's a big question whether the executive branch will
> carry out its own decision."
> 
> Alfredo Duran, a moderate leader in Miami's Cuban exile community, said he
> believes the more conservative exiles' strategy may be to delay Elian's
> deportation to Cuban until after Jan. 24, when Congress comes back into
> session.
> 
> Republicans and even a few Democrats in Washington hope to pass
> legislation
> granting the boy citizenship, a move that would remove the INS from the
> debate and throw a custody hearing into the hands of a presumably
> sympathetic Florida state judge.
> 
> Meanwhile, a hearing into the case before a federal judge is expected to
> occur as early as next week.
> 
> Duran calls the showdown a victory for Castro, no matter how it turns out.
> 
> Miami's militant exiles "have given the government of Cuba a win-win
> situation," he said. "If the child is returned, Cuba wins. And if the
> child
> is not returned, Cuba will be able to give us hell for years about it."
> 
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