Fight over Elian continues in front of cameras
By Associated Press, 04/23/00
WASHINGTON - Elian Gonzalez spent a secluded Easter with his father and got a visit from the Easter Bunny, insulated from the clatter in two nation's capitals and a shaken Miami over the armed raid used to take him away. "Finally," said his father's lawyer, "some silence around them."
The 6-year-old castaway played on the grass with his father, gave a playful kiss to a tall white Easter bunny with a black nose, and ate a lunch of black beans and rice.
"They had a very quiet day, a family day," lawyer Greg Craig told The Associated Press. He represents John Miguel Gonzalez, Elian's father.
But away from their hideaway at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, criticism mounted over the government's tactics, with congressional Republicans calling the actions akin to those of the communist regime that the Cuban boy had fled with his mother.
"This is a frightening event, that American citizens now can expect that the executive branch on their own can decide on whether to raid a home," said House Republican whip Tom DeLay of Texas.
A top Justice official said the only regret was that authorities waited as long as they did.
"We were forced into the action we took by the intransigence of that family," Eric Holder, deputy attorney general, said of the boy's Miami relatives. "We probably should have taken a decisive action sooner."
After a day of raw anger, street fires and violence in the Little Havana neighborhood, Miami fell quiet for Easter celebration but was still a city under tight police control after more than 350 arrests Saturday.
"We will celebrate in tears," said Sergio Perez, a Miami neighbor of the relatives who kept Elian for five months until federal agents brandishing guns burst through their door before dawn Saturday and seized him.
In Washington, near the heavily secured air base where the 6-year-old boy is staying, DeLay said he was "sickened" by the use of force and said hearings were certain on Capitol Hill.
"There was no court order that gave them permission to raid the private home of American citizen," DeLay said, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press. "This has been a bungled mess."
Countering assertions that it acted without legal authority, the Justice Department late Sunday released a copy of a search warrant obtained Friday night by the Immigration and Naturalization Service from a U.S. magistrate in Miami authorizing agents to search the home for Elian and "to seize same."
George W. Bush, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, attacked the government's course earlier and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi said he thought "this could only happen in Castro's Cuba."
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said President Clinton personally assured him three weeks ago that Elian would not be taken in the night.
"There was an insensitivity, a crudeness to this, to do this one of the most deeply religious periods of the year, to do it at a time when families are reflecting on spiritual values, to do it in the middle of the night," he said of the raid, which happened at about 5 a.m. He spoke on ABC's "This Week."
Holder, on NBC, said a previous court ruling upholding the government's general actions in the case, combined with an order from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, sufficed as legal grounds for moving in.
He acknowledged concern by the administration that Elian may be used by Cuban President Fidel Castro as a political trophy.
"That is Fidel Castro's history," Holder said. "He has shown that he has always tried to use whatever he can for his own political advantage."
Indeed, Castro called Saturday "a day of glory for our people" as some 400,000 Cubans summoned to a rally celebrated the father-and-son reunion.
Praising U.S. officials for their forceful action, the communist leader declared a "truce" in his enduring Cold War-era struggle with the United States, but added: "Tomorrow the battle continues."
Elian, for once, was out of earshot of all the fuss. He joined his father, stepmother and baby half-brother Saturday in private quarters at Andrews Air Force Base, the home base of Air Force One.
"They had a very quiet day, a family day -- I don't think they had many visitors," Craig said.
He said the family went for a walk and got a visit from the base's Easter Bunny.
Elian's Miami relatives, flying to Washington soon after Elian was taken from their arms, were rebuffed again Sunday in trying to get on to the base to see him.
Elian was rescued at sea on Thanksgiving Day after a boat carrying him and other Cuban refugees sank. His mother drowned.
"I will not leave until I see this boy," Marisleysis Gonzalez, the 21-year-old cousin who acted as Elian's surrogate mother, told a Washington news conference. "I know he's not OK."
With Juan Miguel Gonzalez holed up with his two sons and second wife at Andrews, the only accounts of Elian's state of mind since the reunion came from Craig and another supporter, Rev. Joan Brown Campbell.
She said on "This Week" that Elian acted like a "very happy, mischievous, normal little boy" when she visited Saturday.
Craig released two photos after the reunion, showing Elian smiling in his father's embrace and playing with his baby brother. The Miami relatives contended the images were manipulated, but Craig countered that they were taken with a "disposable, Kodak camera" given to him by the father.
Immigration agents who accompanied Elian on the flight to Andrews reported that when they left him with his father at the base, he was "happily playing on the floor," said Maria Cardona, speaking for the INS.
Wailing as he was carried off in Miami, Elian was calm on the plane, she said, napping on an immigration officer's lap, coloring and, at one point, crying a bit.
In a national CNN-Gallup poll taken after the seizure, six in 10 respondents supported the government's actions to reunite Elian with his father. They were split on whether the government used too much force.
That question percolated through Washington.
"I was sickened," DeLay said. "There was no danger to Elian. ... There was no danger to anyone. In fact, the government put these people in danger by invading their house."
Attorney General Janet Reno, whose decision to use force was supported by President Clinton, said authorities had heard guns might be in the house or in the hands of crowds keeping vigil outside.
Holder said the government had no firm evidence about guns but given the possibility, "we had to make sure that our people were protected."
Elian Gonzalez, held by Donato Dalrymple, is taken by U.S. federal agents from his Miami relatives in a pre-dawn raid. (AP Photo / Alan Diaz)