The Washington Post
April 8, 2000
 
 
Reno Sets Deadline on Elian
 
Miami Relatives Must Transfer Boy to Father Next Week

                  By Karen DeYoung
                  Washington Post Staff Writer
                  Saturday, April 8, 2000; Page A04

                  The apparent last act in the four-month-old custody drama over Elian
                  Gonzalez began yesterday as Attorney General Janet Reno told the
                  6-year-old boy's Miami relatives that, whether voluntarily or against their
                  will, they must give him up next week. Reno said Elian's father, who met
                  with her for an hour yesterday, told her "what he has said time and again: He
                  wants his son back."

                  In Miami, leaders of days of demonstrations called on Cuban Americans to
                  postpone plans to disrupt city traffic and block access to the city's
                  international airport, amid uncertainty over how the relatives would react to
                  Reno's statement, conveyed in a news conference and in separate letters to
                  them and to father Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

                  "Now is not the time for civil disobedience," said a statement issued by the
                  Cuban American National Foundation.

                  But a lawyer for the relatives, Manny Diaz, told a crowd gathered before the
                  Little Havana home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, that "we have
                  not had our day in court." And relatives continued, without apparent success,
                  to try to persuade Elian's father to meet with them to discuss the boy.
                  Another great-uncle, Delfin Gonzalez, flew to Washington but was turned
                  back by Montgomery County police at the family's request from approaching
                  the Bethesda home of the Cuban diplomat where the father is staying.

                  Florida's two senators, Connie Mack (R) and Bob Graham (D), acting at the
                  behest of the relatives, also wrote to Juan Miguel Gonzalez's attorney to ask
                  for a meeting. In a later news conference, they blasted Reno and the
                  Immigration and Naturalization Service as acting "in a heavy-handed and
                  outrageous manner" toward the relatives.

                  The father's attorney, Gregory B. Craig, responded to the appeals by saying
                  his client "has tried for over four months, in almost daily phone calls with
                  these people, to persuade them to give his son back. They have resisted not
                  only his efforts, but the INS, the attorney general, and the federal court" that
                  last month upheld an INS ruling that custody belonged with the father.

                  "It raises in our minds whether this is just another delay," Craig said.

                  Reno made it clear yesterday there would be no more delay. "The law is
                  very clear," she said at her news conference. "A child who has lost his
                  mother belongs with his sole surviving parent, especially with one who has
                  shared such a close and continuous relationship with his son."

                  Elian's mother drowned when the boat carrying her, Elian and other
                  would-be migrants from Cuba capsized last November.

                  Reno said that the relatives would be given instructions early next week on
                  "when and where Elian is to be turned over to his father, and at that time, the
                  INS will formally transfer parole and care to the father." Officials said the
                  second letter would be issued Monday or Tuesday, with a turnover day of
                  Wednesday or Thursday. Asked what the government is prepared to do if
                  the relatives resist, Reno said they "have indicated that they intend to comply
                  with the law . . . and so I don't think we have to get to that point."

                  Officials said that U.S. marshals are prepared to remove Elian from Lazaro
                  Gonzalez's home if the relatives do not agree to bring him to them. Although
                  Miami area mayors said last week that local police would not participate in
                  any effort related to the removal of the boy, federal officials said last night
                  that they had become more confident in recent days that the police would
                  "do their job" if violent protests erupt.

                  In his own statement on the steps of the Justice Department after meeting
                  with Reno, the father said he "appreciated the opportunity" Reno and INS
                  Commissioner Doris N. Meissner had given him to tell them about the
                  "suffering" his family has gone through. He said he wanted to thank the two
                  fishermen who rescued Elian, as well as "the American people who have
                  supported us."

                  Sources said the meeting with Reno, Meissner, Deputy Attorney General
                  Eric H. Holder Jr. and other officials had been emotional, and that Gonzalez
                  hugged the attorney general when it ended. Gonzalez's wife, Nercy, moved
                  to the corner of the room at one point to feed their 6-month-old son, Hianny.

                  No Cuban officials were present at the meeting.

                  In the Justice Department letters sent to the father and the Miami relatives,
                  Reno asked them to meet separately with two psychiatrists and one
                  psychologist Meissner has appointed to advise the INS on the least disruptive
                  way to transfer Elian to his father's care. On Sunday, the family in Bethesda
                  is to meet with Paulina F. Kernberg, a professor of psychiatry at the Weill
                  Medical College of Cornell University and Lourdes Rigual-Lynch, the
                  director of Mental Health Services at Montefiore Medical Center--both of
                  whom speak Spanish. The third is Jerry M. Weiner, professor emeritus of
                  psychiatry and pediatrics at the George Washington University Medical
                  School.

                  The letter said the three-member team would travel to Miami on Monday in
                  hopes of meeting with the relatives there. Officials said the three already
                  had been sent all Justice Department documentation on the boy as well as
                  television tapes of him. They said the initial opinion of the team, and of other
                  experts consulted, had been that there should be no transition period in the
                  turnover.

                  "They made it very clear it should be done promptly" now that the father is in
                  this country, one official said, even if the child violently protests that he does
                  not want to go. "Their initial advice was that there is no reason to believe he
                  would not immediately start rebonding with his father."

                  The team apparently plans to meet initially only with Lazaro Gonzalez and
                  other family members in Miami to try to convince them that they could play
                  an important role in soothing Elian's fears. "They said he needs to feel [the
                  Miami relatives] are helping him; that the relatives need to take
                  responsibility" for the transfer. If the relatives agree, the team may then ask
                  to meet with Elian.

                  Although the Miami relatives remained out of sight and issued no public
                  reaction to Reno's news conference, or the letter they received, opinion
                  among people close to them seemed to be divided on the psychiatric team.
                  Ramon Saul Sanchez, leader of the exile group Democracy Movement, said
                  that "we share some pleasure in the fact that finally, after all this time, they
                  have finally listened" to the relatives' demands that the government take
                  Elian's delicate emotional condition into account.

                  But one of the family's lawyers said that from what Reno said he feared the
                  team already had made up its mind without ever examining Elian. He said
                  that the relatives' previously had demanded that psychiatrists be allowed to
                  evaluate whether sending Elian back to Cuba with his father was the best
                  thing for him.

                  Meanwhile, the Bethesda neighborhood where the father and his family are
                  staying remained a media camp yesterday, with more than 20 cameras
                  trained on the Millwood Road home surrounded by yellow police tape.

                  Unlike Thursday, no protesters appeared on the street as neighbors milled
                  about at an impromptu block party.

                  Celeste Lavin, 9, and Jackie Kantor, 8, sold lemonade, brownies and pizza at
                  a corner stand. The girls said they had made about $28, with half of it going
                  to a fund-raiser at Bradley Hills Elementary School. "A lot of people have
                  been tipping us," Lavin said.

                  About 4:30 p.m., police at the family's request turned away Delfin Gonzalez,
                  who had just arrived from Miami. A spokesman for the Cuban American
                  National Foundation said Elian's great-uncle would spend the night here, and
                  return to Bethesda to try again today.

                  Staff writers Sue Anne Pressley in Miami and Patrice Gaines and Katherine
                  Shaver in Washington contributed to this report.

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