INS honors Elián agents
Ceremony to commend law enforcers the right thing to do, agency chief says
BY CAROL ROSENBERG
BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- The federal agent captured on film with goggles
and gun as
he ordered Donato Dalrymple to relinquish Elián González
from a Little Havana
closet was here -- as was Betty Ann Mills, the agent who raced
the boy to a
nearby van, and got a spirited, sustained applause for it on
Tuesday.
One by one, in graduation-ceremony style, the 100-plus agents
of Operation
Reunion took the stage at a federal law enforcers training academy
here for a
handshake and letter of commendation from U.S. Immigration Commissioner
Doris Meissner.
``Our decision to conduct a tactical enforcement operation to
reunite Elián
González with his father after five months of separation
sparked criticism that
some have sought to reignite on the occasion of this ceremony,''
Meissner said in
a prepared statement. ``It was my firm conviction, then and now,
that we did the
right thing on April 22, and we are doing it again today.''
Meissner, at the 1,500-acre training base for a two-day meeting
with the district
directors of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, invited
126 INS and Border
Patrol agents to receive awards -- nearly 400 miles north of
Little Havana.
In all, 114 agents attended, some in uniform, others in business
attire, said John
Shewairy, chief of staff to Miami District Director Robert Wallis.
Names were called, and officers took the stage in a solemn hourlong
ceremony,
added INS chief spokeswoman Maria Cardona of Washington, who
refused media
access to the event.
``It was law-enforcement sensitive. A lot of these guys have to
count on their
anonymity to do their job,'' she said.
Cardona reported that Mills, the Spanish-speaking agent who spirited
the boy
from the home in a white blanket, got a noteworthy ``lot of applause.''
She also
spotted among the honorees the agent from the Border Police Tactical
Unit,
BORTAC, captured by an AP photographer pointing a gun in the
direction of the
child and Dalrymple. He has never been identified.
In her remarks, Meissner called the raid, in which gun-toting,
pepper-spraying
agents stormed through Lázaro González's front
door and emerged with his
6-year-old great-nephew, ``the pivotal step in closing one of
the most difficult
chapters in the history of INS' work.''
``Your efforts paid off,'' Meissner added. ``This was evidenced
when I went to
Andrews Air Force base just hours after the operation and saw
a safe Elián with
his arms wrapped tightly around the neck of his beaming father.''
INS and Border Patrol agents typically train at the Federal Law
Enforcement
Training Center here, not far from posh Jekyll Island, for such
raids. A sprawling
campus supported by a $151 million annual federal appropriation,
it has firing
ranges, classrooms for lectures and forensic and fingerprint
labs.
Outside the gates Tuesday, four Cuban-American women from Miami's
Mothers
Against Repression stood vigil with a large sign proclaiming
``Is this cause for
celebration?'' and a giant photo from the raid.
``This ceremony here is a travesty. They never should have had
it,'' said Maria
Eugenia Cosculluela, who drove through the night to arrive with
fellow black-clad
protesters Sylvia Iriondo, Rosa de la Cruz and Sylvia Karman.
Operation Reunion ``was a very sad day for us,'' she added. ``A
poor little child, 6
years old, was petrified when he was taken out by the very huge
force in Little
Havana.''
Academy officials had designated a protest spot on the edge of
their property, out
of sight of the facility's main gate. With the permission of
``Sally's Cop Shop,'' a
store that sells law enforcement gear, they moved to the shop's
parking lot
immediately opposite the entrance -- where they got occasional
honks and
thumbs-up signs from motorists who slowed to drive past their
modest protest.
Said de la Cruz, who was overcome by a blast of pepper spray in
the April 22
raid: ``It's a shame. Miami as a community is already Balkanized.
People are hurt
and this doesn't help at all.''
INS budgeted $25,000 for the awards event, Shewairy said, to cover
transportation, hotels and per diems for the honorees. ``There
was no
extravagance to it whatsoever,'' he said. ``It was a proud, proud
moment, and the
Miami district has very few of them. And we enjoyed it.''
Disclosure of the event, which INS officials had planned to keep
secret, stirred
controversy back in Miami. Cardona said one reason why the commissioner
invited the agents from Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando and
El Paso to
Georgia was to avoid offending sensitivities.
``One of the criticisms, as you know, is the fact that this being
done rubs salt in
the wounds of an already sensitive community,'' she said. ``Well,
we absolutely
don't want to add to that.''
Nevertheless, demonstrators displayed their anger all day in front
of INS
headquarters at Biscayne Boulevard and 79th Street. Like the
group in Georgia,
they held pictures of the predawn raid, as well as Cuban and
American flags with
black ribbons attached.
Democracy leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez spoke
to the crowd, as did Elián's
great-uncle, who said they would gain victory, eventually.
``There's a higher authority that will right all wrongs by humans,''
Lázaro González
said.
Herald staff writer Sabrina Walters contributed to this report.