My lack of sympathy for "the Miami relatives" stems from a pretty basic view of parental rights. As far as I know (and there may be things I don't know, I haven't followed it all that closely), this child was taken away from his home without the permission of his custodial parent (kidnapped) and forced into a dangerous voyage on a wildly unsafe craft, with total disregard for his safety and welfare. He almost died. Now his custodial parent wants him back. In my mind - possibly because I'm a parent - if the custodial parent whose 6 year old was snatched without his permission wants a the kid back, he gets the kid back, and anybody who refuses to give the kid back is a kidnapper. I think the force used in the raid was out of proportion to the threat, but I also think that it was worth 3 minutes of trauma to get the poor kid out of that circus. I think he's best off at home, with his father.
I regard the asylum petition as a joke, forced on the kid for political reasons by the Miami clique. He is not under any threat, far from it.
I'm not even convinced that he'd be a lot better off in the US. Of course he's in the limelight now, and being treated like a prince. But what happens when the limelight fades, and he's just another kid? What happens when nobody's paying attention, and all those rich Cubans who promised support stop answering the phone calls? When everybody forgets - and they will, very quickly - and it comes down to the difficult and costly business of raising a kid, who will care for him more, his father or a drunken uncle and a 21 year old with no experience of child-raising and questionable emotional stability?
INS raids are generally not reported in the media, unless they involve hundreds of illegal aliens. Go to a Latino neighborhood and ask for stories about La Migra and excessive force, you'll get an earful. In a way, you can't blame the agents, who often have no way of knowing if they are going into the home of a simple wetback family who just wanted a better life or the home of a simple wetback family with a couple of kids who happen to be armed gang members. Most law enforcement types would prefer to err on the side of overwhelming force: nobody wants to kick down a door unarmed and find himself looking at the wrong end of a shotgun. Habits are hard to break, and I have heard - perhaps unreliably - that threats of armed resistance had been made by the Miami Cuban community.
I'm not sufficiently informed to comment on the legalities, but I know that if somebody had my kid and wouldn't give him back I would certainly expect the government of any country to do whatever was necessary to get him back to me. |
