Section B · Page 11
The University Daily Kansan
Tuesday, January 18, 2000
Nation
Cuban boy's future uncertain
Father fears threat of U.S. subpoena
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Cuba's government is orchestrating anti-American demonstrations demanding the return of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez largely to protect U.S. property and diplomats in Havana, a top Cuban official said.
Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, said Sunday that anger concerning Elian's continued presence in the United States was so real and widespread among Cubans that it could pose a potential danger to U.S. interests.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service has ruled that the boy, rescued at sea by the Coast Guard after his mother drowned Nov. 25 trying to reach the United States, must be returned to his father in communist Cuba. But last week, Attorney General Janet Reno lifted the INS deadline, giving Ellan's relatives in Miami a chance fight a federal court battle to keep the boy with them.
Some Cuban-Americans and members of Congress have suggested congressional action to give Elian permanent residency or even American citizenship to keep him in the United States.
Alarcon, President Fidel Castro's top adviser on U.S. matters, derided the suggestion of a special congressional grant of citizenship to the boy.
"Congress is supposed to be a serious institution and not an instrument to permit what amounts to a kidnapping of a small boy," he said.
Elian's father.
Fidel Castro: His government is orchestrating anti-America demonstrations
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, said last week he had no intention of coming to Miami to pick up his son.
ly demanded that he come.
But Sunday, U.S. politicians repeated-
George W. Bush, a Republican presidential hopeful, said he hoped the elder Gonzalez would come to the United States and see how his son was being captured.
accepted before making a decision about Ellian's future
Speaking from Havana, Alarcon said Gonzalez was free to go whenever he could be assured of getting his son without being entangled in legal or political problems.
Alarcon said that Gonzalez could face the threat of a congressional subpoena.
Elian Gonzalez: At center of an international custody flight
Alarcon denounced the citizenship effort.
"You cannot impose citizenship upon anybody," he said. "And this individual, this 6-year-old boy, has not requested anything, and he cannot, legally speaking."
VIP treatment in question
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — The VIP treatment lavished on 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez contrasts starkly with the way most youngsters who reach the United States without parents or paperwork are handled.
Most are rapidly deported. Others spend bewildering weeks in detention.
As Ellian's Cuban American hosts took him to Walt Disney World last month, a lawyer in Portland, Ore., was fighting for the release of a 15-year-old Chinese girl held in a juvenile jail for seven months. At one hearing, said lawyer Mark Potter, the girl couldn't wipe away tears because her hands were chained to her waist.
"Her only crime was that
her parents put her on a boat so she could get a better life over here," Potter said.
At facilities across the United States, scores of other young, unaccompanied aliens are held at detention centers, sometimes for months and often without an attorney to help resolve their fate.
"The only juveniles kept in detention are those who pose some threat to themselves and others, or juveniles who are at risk," INS representative Russ Bergeron said Thursday.
Human rights and immigrant rights groups are pressing the Immigration and Naturalization Service to halt the practice and use other housing options.
"The INS is genuinely trying to find alternatives to detention, but it's painfully
slow," said Ralston Deffenbaugh, a former human rights lawyer who is president of the Baltimore-based Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.
Elian's case is fundamentally different because, as a Cuban reaching U.S. soil, he has an automatic right under the law to seek U.S. citizenship. In Elian's case, the INS turned him over to relatives in Miami who oppose his return to his father in Cuba.
In contrast to Elian, some of the unaccompanied children who spend long periods in detention centers belong to criminal gangs. And some are detained for their own safety because the smugglers who brought them into the country might track them down to demand payment for the trip, Bergeron said.
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