Last week, attorney general Janet Reno demanded that Lazaro Gonzalez deliver his great-nephew Elian to Elian’s father Juan Miguel, now holed up in the diplomatic residence of the Cuban mission outside Washington. Lazaro did not knuckle under. Had he done so, the boy would now be in Cuba, the plaything of a totalitarian regime. While the administration had expressed its “wish” that both father and son remain in the United States until court appeals are exhausted, Reno’s deputy Eric Holder had stressed that no one could have forced Juan Miguel to stay. We know perfectly well what would have happened if Elian had been delivered to the Cuban authorities who surround his father.
Of course, everyone seems to think it natural that Juan Miguel Gonzalez hasn’t gone to Miami to see his son. He’s been too busy, meeting with pro-Castro groups, from the Alliance for a Responsible Cuba Policy to TransAfrica, and chatting with the likes of Charles Rangel, Steve Largent, and Maxine Waters. This last has a truly vile record of cosseting Castro, one that extends to a 1998 letter asking the Maximum Leader to continue to offer “political asylum” to former Black Panther Joanne Chesimard, who fled to Cuba after being charged with — and later convicted of — murdering a police officer in 1973.
So is Juan Miguel here as a father or as a lobbyist for Castro? We pass no judgment either on his character or on his fitness as a father. But we insist that, with his mother having been moved to a Cuban government house — presumably not for a vacation — and with his wife’s child from a previous marriage left behind on the island, we cannot know the pressures under which he is laboring. We would like to be sure that he actually has his son’s best interests at heart. After all, many a father in such circumstances has forgone the joy of bringing up his son to allow him to live with loving relatives in a free country.
Meanwhile, President Clinton told the American Society of Newspaper Editors last week: “I did everything I could to stay out of it to avoid politicizing it.” Baloney. INS commissioner Doris Meissner’s January 5 order that Elian be sent back to his father in Cuba is just that — a discretionary order from an executive branch official who reports, through Janet Reno, to the president. The administration has spent weeks pontificating about the “rule of law,” while behaving as if it is the law.
Well, now the administration has been given a law to obey. The 11th Circuit in Atlanta issued a stay last week barring Elian from being sent out of the country until Lazaro’s appeal comes up on May 8. The administration immediately petitioned the 11th Circuit to order Elian handed over to his father.
Lazaro, for his part, petitioned the U.S. District Court to bar the deportation of Elian until it can be proved that Cuba is “no longer engaged in ‘systematic, gross violations of human rights.'” The administration said in response that “once Juan Gonzalez has custody of Elian, the decision as to when, if ever, Elian leaves the United States will be his to make.” This is the position of an administration that wants to collude with Cuba — in contravention of the law, if necessary — in hustling a little boy out of the country.
Most disheartening is to see American government officials parroting the Cuban campaign of calumny launched against the Miami Gonzalezes. In the 11th Circuit case, Justice Department spokesperson Carole Florman accused Lazaro Gonzalez of being a lawbreaker who comes before the court with “unclean hands.”
Unclean? Let us be clear about what Lazaro Gonzalez did and did not do. He was not stoking violence or “daring the government to take [Elian] by force,” as one wire report had it. Rather, as Lazaro’s lawyer Spencer Eig explains: “If the INS wants to deport [the boy] they will have to do it themselves. They are free to come to the house. [Lazaro] will unlock his doors and he will not resist and he will stand by tearfully.” Mr. Gonzalez is a law-abiding man. But living in America, not Cuba, he is not required to assist Fidel Castro in depriving individuals of their rights. That task is reserved for Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.
Christopher Caldwell, for the Editors.
