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A tale of two photos
The latest battle of images proves that the Elián saga had to be resolved by means of law, not propaganda.
By Joan Walsh
[04/22/00]

Raid on Little Havana
Miami Cubans say they will make Clinton pay for taking Elián. [UPDATED]
By John Lantigua
[04/22/00]

A world of their own
The Miami media recognizes and helps perpetuate a separate reality for Cuban exiles.
By Max Castro
[04/21/00]

Columbine "coverup"
Victim's lawyer charges sheriff's department with hiding details of high school massacre.
By Dave Cullen
[04/21/00]

Stunning new Columbine charges
On the eve of the massacre's anniversary, a flurry of lawsuits by victims' families allege that law enforcement killed a student -- and failed to save many more.
By Dave Cullen
[04/20/00]

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In three minutes before dawn today, Janet Reno did more than return Elián González to the custody of his father. The raid by armed INS agents and U.S. Marshals -- what law enforcement officers euphemistically call a "dynamic entry" -- simultaneously ended the exploitative and illegal detention of the boy by his Miami relatives and moved the controversy's center of gravity away from Little Havana's overheated streets.

Seven years ago last week, Reno's disastrous assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco created a symbol. Today's raid did exactly the opposite: Reno removed Elián from symbol-sodden Miami's streets and let him, for a little while at least, be just a child again, reunited with his father away from television cameras, demonstrators, religious visionaries, squabbling relations and politicians.

Of course, Lazaro González and Miami's Cubans are not the Branch Davidians; the INS is not the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; and the imperative to restore a child to his father is of a different order entirely from serving a search warrant on a heavily armed religious sect. Reno's choice of this particular weekend to remove Elián from Lazaro González was dictated by the timing of court rulings and the goalpost-shifting intransigence of the Miami family.

But coming two days after the triple-anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, Waco and Oklahoma City, at the most solemn moment of Easter week, today's climactic decision offered its own special perils -- ranging from large-scale civil unrest in Miami to violence from well-funded Cuban-American extremists who have not hesitated to employ bombs and guns in years past.

That Reno made this decision at all, say Justice Department sources familiar with her thinking, is largely because Lazaro González and his political handlers overplayed their hand. After five months of negotiation, removing Elián took on a new sense of urgency after great-uncle Lazaro refused to allow government psychiatrists to interview Elián last week, instead thrusting the boy into a late-night video session in which he declared he does not want to return to Cuba.

Suddenly, what had been a custody fight more and more resembled a doomed hostage negotiation. Declared Dr. Irwin Redlener, head of the government's evaluation team: "This child needs to be rescued."

Thursday's ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta ordering that Elián remain in the country pending resolution of the asylum claim filed by great-uncle Lazaro only strengthened the case by conspicuously avoiding any stand on the question of his custody.

Mental health professionals who frequently advise the Justice Department say the situation was only going to get worse, with a disjunction between the perceptions of the family and what was apparent to everyone else, and great-uncle Lazaro backed into a desperate corner with everything staked on holding the boy.

And while that case remains on appeal, the outcome is no more likely to please those Miami relatives. As former U.S. Rep. Bruce Morrison, author of the 1990 immigration law under which Elián is making his claim puts it, so far there has been no evidence "to support the idea that Elián has a well-founded fear of persecution," the standard necessary in an asylum case.

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