March 22, 2000
Judge Upholds Plan for Return of Boy to Cuba
By RICK BRAGG
The Conclusion of the Ruling on Asylum (March 22, 2000)
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MIAMI, March 21 -- The effort by the Miami relatives of 6-year-old Eli n Gonz lez to prevent his return to his father in Cuba was dealt a setback today when a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit requesting a political asylum hearing for the boy, concluding that a long, bitter legal battle was not in Eli n's best interest.
Judge K. Michael Moore of United States District Court here ruled today that only Attorney General Janet Reno could grant Eli n asylum. In Washington today, Ms. Reno said that she would not grant the child asylum and that he should be returned promptly to his father, Juan Miguel Gonz lez, in Cuba.
"We're going to do everything that should be done after proper consultation to insure that the child is reunited with his father in an orderly, fair and prompt way," Ms. Reno said at a news conference today. "It is time for this little boy to move on with life at his father's side."
Lawyers for the boy's Miami relatives said late today that they had already filed an appeal with the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. They also requested that the court delay the boy's return pending the outcome of any appeal.
The boy was found floating off the Florida coast on Thanksgiving, the sole survivor of an effort to reach the United States in which his mother perished.
Lawyers for Eli n's Miami relatives refused to acknowledge defeat today. "We are confident," said Kendall Coffey, a lawyer for the family.
But experts on child custody and immigration who have followed this international custody battle said the lawyers were just trying to put a brave face on what appeared to be a sound defeat.
Michael Ray, an immigration lawyer in Miami, said the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, is much more likely than other courts to uphold the government's position in a case like Eli n's. "They've got a tough row to hoe," Mr. Ray of the lawyers for the Miami relatives. "The 11th Circuit is not the most liberal when it comes to ruling against the government."
"This is terminal," said David Abraham, a professor of immigration law at the University of Miami. He said the ruling cut through a sideshow of international politics that had obfuscated what should have been a simple custody case.
Judge Moore, who did not rule from the bench but posted his decision on the Internet, affirmed the government's assertion that Eli n's father, not Eli n himself, must speak for the child's legal rights.
A 6-year-old is too young to understand the legal questions in such a case, the judge said. While he concluded that the relatives' lawsuit was well intended, he wrote, "Each passing day is another day lost between Juan Gonz lez and his son."
Meanwhile, the appeal filed by lawyers for Eli n's Miami relatives argues that immigration laws do not exclude children from asking for asylum.
If they have to, they will take Eli n's case to the Supreme Court, the lawyers said.
"Eli n has not yet had his day in court," said Spencer Eig, one of eight lawyers representing Lazaro Gonz lez, the boy's great uncle and temporary guardian.
Mr. Eig and other lawyers said they were still hopeful that Eli n could somehow win an asylum hearing, saying that immigration laws allow any "alien" to apply for asylum, even children. "Any alien means Eli n," Mr. Coffey said.
But to exclude the father as the boy's legal representative, the judge ruled, would have required proof that he abused the child. There was no such proof, the judge ruled.
The boy's father, who had said he did not trust "corrupt" American courts, could not be reached for comment, but the Cuban government issued a cautious statement: "We must analyze with serenity and calm the apparently positive news, without underestimating the obstacles and difficulties still necessary to overcome in order to achieve the kidnapped boy's return to Cuba."
In Miami, where about 40 people demonstrated peacefully outside Lazaro Gonz lez's house in Little Havana, it was a momentous but oddly quiet day in an emotional saga.
At a news conference outside the federal courthouse in downtown Miami, Marisleysis Gonzalez, Eli n's cousin, said: "I'm overwhelmed.
I have faith, and I will keep my faith."
Fishermen found Eli n floating on an inner tube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale after his mother, Elizabet Brotons, and 10 others were killed when their boat capsized. Eli n quickly became a symbol of freedom in Miami's Cuban-American community and the prize in a tug of war between Fidel Castro, the Cuban president, and anti-Castro groups here.
The boy's face began appearing on T-shirts and posters in the United States and on billboards in Cuba. People marched on both sides of the Florida Straits, while in the United States politicians took sides and held news conferences.
In January, in a decision approved by Ms. Reno and endorsed by President Clinton, the Immigration and Naturalization Service ordered that Eli n be returned to his father, even though Mr. Gonz lez had refused to travel to Miami to ask for his son's return in court. Eli n's relatives here countered with the lawsuit demanding an asylum hearing as Cuban-Americans marched through the streets, clogging traffic and shouting their displeasure.
But today, even though the news was perhaps even worse for them, Cuban-American leaders said they planned no demonstrations and would await the final legal outcome.
"We respect the judge's decision," said Luis Felipe Rojas, press secretary for Movimiento Democracia, which had organized previous demonstrations. Mr. Rojas said those demonstrations had been organized to demand that Eli n's case be heard by the courts.
Many Miamians, including some Cuban-Americans, said the January demonstrations damaged the sophisticated, cosmopolitan image to which Miami aspired.
And business owners worried that television images of the demonstrations -- including one in which a frustrated motorist drove his car through a line of hand-holding protesters -- could damage the city's tourist trade.
In what could only be described as a strange distraction today, a rooster crowed from a tree outside the federal courthouse in downtown Miami as reporters, photographers and television news crews gathered for the noon news conference.
In Miami, it is not unusual for relatives of people on trial to sacrifice a chicken or other animal outside the courthouses in a Santeria or other religious ceremony, for luck. The rooster, some people here said, may have somehow escaped such a sacrifice.
Nearby, a handful of disappointed Cuban-Americans said the judge had erred.
"They have no respect for Eli n's rights," said Jorge Gonzalez, who pitched a tent outside the Miami-Dade County Courthouse in January and went on a hunger strike with two other men to protest the immigration service's decision to send Eli n home.
Only in Miami, said Mr. Abraham, would such a simple case become so murky and yet so spectacular.
Judge Moore's ruling, Mr. Abraham said, "brings us back to the core of the case -- that a 6-year-old is spoken for by the surviving parent, unless that parent is incompetent." |
