Steven, if it was my child, I would NOT want a bunch of INS agents busting down the door with machine guns. That to me is one of the worst kind of nightmare scenario's imaginable.
That home was open to the news media and just about anyone who wanted for weeks. If the INS's intelligence is that pathetic, someone should be fired. I don't believe for a minute that a priest walking up to the house with plainclothed agents would have any difficulty obtaining the child if given a court order. To believe otherwise, is to buy into the propaganda coming out of the Justice Department. Unfortunately, we will never know.
Perhaps the child should go to back to Cuba with his father. I am not going to judge the personalities involved. To me, it's only speculation based on sketchy news information. I view both parties as potentially decent parents. After all, we really know very little about his father, mother or relatives. I've heard the father and mother were divorced three years before the child was born. I've also heard the father hadn't seen the boy for three years before he left. Other reports indicate differently.
We can't really know for sure, because he came from a communist country which doesn't allow freedom of the press. To me, both sides can potentially be great people or not. I really don't know. That's why we have a family court and judges.
If my son or daughter were being held by relatives. I would have taken the first flight to Florida and walked up to the house and said, let me have him. And seen where it went from there. Painting the protestors as some kind of evil group of thugs is simply buying into more of the media propaganda spin. That boy was in no danger in that home. After all, the INS itself placed him there only a few months ago.
We also still don't really know if the father wants to take the child to Cuba. I don't believe he has spent one minute outside of the prying eyes of Cuban diplomats or agents of Castro. Care to guess why?
The best thing that could happen for Elian is for the father to declare asylum himself and ask to stay in the U.S. What caring father would want his son raised in Communist Cuba when compared to America? Unfortunately, he's probably been brainwashed (indoctrinated) by Castro.
The justice department is supposed to uphold the law. Breaking into a law abiding citizens home and shoving machine guns in the faces of children is reprehensible and illegal without a court order. And I don't believe for a minute 6 year old children are snatched this way by the INS, even in latino communities as you suggest. As a matter of fact, I'll bet you can't find one other incident in which a 6 year old child was snatched in a similar manner by INS agents. Especially without a court order.
It's not kidnapping when a relative of yours is given to you to take care of. If disputing custodial rights of a relative is regarding as kidnapping, then we probably have thousands of grandparents kidnapping their children in America today, while they await a court hearing.
There was no reason to attack the protesters and storm the home. No one was in any real danger. There was a custody case working its way through the courts. In America, we resolve legal disputes in court. Without a court order, federal agents stormed the home of a law-abiding citizen and seized a person. Janet Reno and the INS were the ones who kidnapped a child illegally.
Even liberal legal experts like Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe say that Clinton and Reno acted illegally, that they had no court order.
Michael |
