To: The Barracuda™ who wrote (6767 ) 5/31/2000 11:22:00 PM From: jhild Respond to of 9127
Wednesday May 31 10:54 PM ET Court Reportedly to Release Elian Ruling Thursday MIAMI (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court is expected to release a ruling on Thursday on a petition from the Miami relatives of Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez to force a political asylum hearing for the boy, a Miami television station reported on Wednesday. Citing unidentified sources, WSVN-TV, the Miami Fox affiliate said the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta was expected to issue its decision on whether Elian, who survived a migrant smuggling boat disaster in which his mother and 10 others died, should be allowed to make a case for staying in the United States. As word of the possible ruling raced through Miami, a small group of Cuban Americans gathered outside the Little Havana home where the 6-year-old lived for five months after his rescue at sea last November. Some waved Cuban flags and signs reading: ''Elian, Miami is with you.'' Elian has been at the heart of an international custody battle between his Miami relatives, who say he should not be sent back to Communist Cuba, and his father, Cuban tourism worker Juan Miguel Gonzalez, who has said he wants to take the boy home. The Miami relatives asked a U.S. District Court in Miami to grant the boy a political asylum hearing, arguing that he would be harmed by going back to Cuba. But a Miami federal judge sided with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which in January decided that only the boy's father could speak for him on immigration matters. The Miami relatives, led by Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, refused to return the boy to his father. U.S. agents in April stormed the relatives' Little Havana home and snatched the boy, returning him hours later to his father, who had traveled to Washington D.C. to reclaim his son. The relatives appealed the Miami judge's decision to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that U.S. law allows anyone, regardless of his or her age, to seek political asylum. The U.S. Justice Department, joined by a lawyer representing Elian's father, argued that only the surviving parent has the right to decide where the boy should live. Elian survived for two days alone on the inner tube of a tire in the Atlantic Ocean before he was rescued by fishermen just off the Florida coast. Since he was taken from the Miami relatives, he has been staying with his father, stepmother and friends near Washington, D.C., barred from leaving the country by an injunction issued by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. dailynews.yahoo.com