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Immigration in US History González Rescue The Event: Rescue of Elián González, a young Cuban boy who survived the sinking of a refugee boat off the coast of Florida Date: November 25, 1999 Place: Miami, Florida Immigration Issues: Border control; Cuban immigrants; Families and marriage; West Indian immigrants Significance: González's rescue and transportation to Florida touched off a long battle between his relatives in Miami and his father in that influenced U.S. immigration policy and altered American images of Cuban Americans and their place in American society. On November 22, 1999, a five-year-old Cuban boy named Elián González and thirteen other Cubans left Cardenas, Cuba, bound for the United States on a sixteen-foot motorboat. At 10 p.m., their boat capsized and Elián's mother, Elizabeth Brotons, and at least ten other passengers drowned. Three days later, Elián was found floating on an inner tube three miles from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and was taken to Hollywood Regional Medical Center. He was later released to his great-uncle, Lázaro González, by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) until his immigration status could be determined. Lázaro González and Elián's cousin Marisleysis González wanted to keep the boy in the United States, but Elián's father, Juan Miguel González, demanded that the boy be returned to him in Cuba. After González and his wife had divorced, Elián had lived with his mother, although the father, who had remarried, maintained a relationship with the boy. González believed that he had the right to claim his son, who was allegedly taken out of Cuba without his knowledge. Elián's stateside relatives argued that his mother had died bringing her son to the United States in search of freedom and that she would have wished for her child to live in the United States. On December 8, Cuban president Fidel Castro demanded that Elián be returned to Cuba. After Castro's statement, Lázaro González submitted Elián's political asylum application to the INS. A policy created in 1994 grants any Cuban who makes it to land the right to apply for asylum and to stay in the United States. However, anyone caught before reaching land is sent back to Cuba. Political Battle On January 5, the INS announced that Elián belonged with his father and must be returned to Cuba. However, Elián's Miami relatives' attorneys pleaded for the attorney general to reconsider the case. In Miami, in response to the INS statement, hundreds of Cuban American protesters blocked intersections and cut off access to the port. Many were arrested. Following the protests, Lázaro González filed petitions for temporary custody of Elián in a Florida state court. Attorney General Janet Reno denied González's request to overturn the decision of the INS commissioner. On January 22, Elián's Cuban grandmothers came to the United States and met with Reno to appeal for Elián's return to Cuba. They also met with Elián but returned to Cuba without the boy. Subsequently, Elián's Miami relatives argued for an asylum hearing. U.S. district judge K. Michael Moore was assigned to hear the case, and U.S. government lawyers asked Moore to dismiss the asylum lawsuit. Demonstrators tied up traffic outside the court, and others gathered outside the González home in support of the family. Judge Moore dismissed the lawsuit, and the INS informed the Miami relatives that it would revoke Elián's legal status in the United States and strip them of their right to care for him if they did not hand over the boy once the appeals were exhausted. In March, Castro announced that he would send Juan Miguel González to the United States to pick up his son. The U.S. State Department approved visas for González, his wife, and their infant son as well as Elián's cousin, his teacher, and pediatrician to travel to the United States. On April 6, the Cubans arrived in Washington, D.C. Following more demonstrations, Miami Dade mayor Alex Penelas called on the Cuban American community for peace. Reno met with Elián's Miami relatives and ordered them to surrender the boy. However, the relatives defied the order and obtained a court order to keep Elián in the United States. The federal appeals court extended the court order until a May hearing. Nevertheless, on April 22, after long negotiations with Elián's Miami relatives and their lawyers, Reno gave orders for federal agents to seize Elián from their home. In response to the surprise 5:15 a.m. raid in which Elián was removed from the home, people in Miami rioted in the streets for two days. More than 268 people were arrested. On May 11, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta heard oral arguments from lawyers for Elián's father and Miami relatives. However, on June 1, the Atlanta federal court ruled Elián was not entitled to a political asylum hearing and upheld a Miami federal judge's ruling that Elián's father had the right to speak on his behalf. After several requests from the Miami relatives' attorneys, the court advised them that the injunction preventing Elián from leaving the United States would expire at 4 p.m. on June 28, and on that day, Elián, his father, and the rest of his family and friends returned to Cuba. Consequences For Castro and his people, Elián represented a kidnapped child who should be returned to his father. The streets of Cardenas, Elián's place of birth, were filled with posters demanding Elián's return to Cuba. Castro's ultimatums and his handling of the situation may have enhanced his stature among his followers. However, some Cuba experts suggested that Castro used the situation to distract human rights advocates from 1999 political and human rights problems in Cuba and his own people from severe economic problems during 2000. For Cuban Americans in Miami, Elián was a symbol of Cuban suffering and a poster child for the anti-Castro movement. They felt that he would have access to a more prosperous life in the United States and that once he returned to Cuba, he would live a life of communist brainwashing. Although many Cuban Americans thought that trying to keep the boy in the United States was the right thing to do, influential voices questioned whether they should have made a five-year-old child a symbol of the battle against Castro. Others thought that the Elián saga weakened the influence of Cuban Americans in the U.S. government. Finally, the case raised an important question of who should decide a child's future--parents or government officials. José A. Carmona Further ReadingZebich-Knos, Michele, and Heather Nicol. Foreign Policy Toward Cuba: Isolation or Engagement? Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2005. Levine, Robert M., and Moiss Ass. Cuban Miami. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. See Also Coast Guard, U.S.; Cuban immigrants; Cuban refugee policy; Haitian boat people; Mariel boatlift; Refugees and racial/ethnic relations. |
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