Elian's return to Cuba readied

Both sides wait to see if the Supreme Court will step in to stop the 6-year-old's father from taking him home today.

©Associated Press

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 28, 2000

WASHINGTON -- Supporters of Elian Gonzalez's father were planning for the family's return to Cuba today, as they awaited word from the Supreme Court on whether the 6-year-old boy would be allowed to leave the United States.

Unless the justices act, the family is expected to return to Cuba on a charter flight, and one option is a 5 p.m. departure from Dulles International Airport. That would get Elian airborne just one hour after the expiration of the court mandate for him to remain on U.S. soil.

Most of the departure arrangements were being coordinated by the father's attorney, Gregory Craig, Cuban officials said.

But the plans will have to be put on hold if the Supreme Court agrees to hear an appeal by Elian's Miami relatives seeking a political asylum hearing for the boy.

On Tuesday, Juan Miguel Gonzalez's attorney urged the Supreme Court to let him return home with his son.

"Each passing day in this country causes Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his family -- including Elian -- immense and irreparable harm," Craig told the justices in a written response to the Miami relatives' appeal.

"Far from a refugee seeking asylum, Elian is a young boy who wants to be with his family, a non-citizen prevented by force of law from returning to his homeland."

Separately, Solicitor General Seth Waxman, the government's chief appellate lawyer, also asked the court to allow Elian to return home.

The Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches and a staunch supporter of Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said she believes the father has been careful not to promise his son when he might be returning home.

"My overwhelming impression is that no one is talking to him about going home," she said. "I don't think his father is going to talk about this until they're sure they're going."

Also Tuesday, Elian and his father attended a 45-minute prayer service at the United Methodist Building across the street from the Capitol, close to the Supreme Court where his fate was being decided.

Thom White Wolf, the general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, said that during the visit the father thanked the church for its support through a "very difficult process."

Between 80 and 100 people attended the service, including the Gonzalez family and the entourage of Elian's classmates and other Cubans who joined the family in April to wait out the legal struggle over Elian's fate.

On Monday, attorneys for the relatives asked Justice Anthony Kennedy to block Elian's departure so the full court could address the issue. Kennedy deals with cases from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which ruled last week that Elian should be allowed to leave today.

His case has been tied up in the courts since shortly after his arrival in Florida on Nov. 25. The boy's mother and 10 other people drowned after their boat sank en route from communist Cuba to the United States.

Attorneys for the Miami relatives have argued that a few weeks' delay in the legal fight over the boy is a small cost in a case with stakes of such magnitude.

The appeal filed Monday said the case's legal issues "boil down to a single straightforward question: Can the Immigration and Naturalization Service deprive an alien child of his statutory and constitutional right to apply for asylum without conducting any hearing of any kind -- or even without interviewing the child himself?"

But Waxman, the solicitor general, told the court the real question remains the one raised early on by Attorney General Janet Reno: Who speaks for the child?

The Immigration Service decided that his father validly spoke for the boy when he requested he be returned to Cuba, Waxman wrote. "The Court of Appeals correctly concluded that that determination is consistent with the Constitution, the Refugee Act and INS policies. Elian and his father should therefore now be allowed to return home," he said.

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