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At 5:15 a.m. EST, several white vans of the Immigration and Naturalization Service roared up to the small house in Little Havana, surprising a group of some 30 protesters holding vigil outside. About 20 INS agents in commando gear jumped out, some of them carrying rifles and some wearing cloth masks over their faces.

The agents, wearing riot gear, pounded on the door demanding entry, and when they were refused, they broke down the door and stormed the home of the family which had defied INS orders to relinquish the child. According to Attorney General Janet Reno, a team of eight agents entered the house and spent only three minutes inside.

A Spanish-speaking female agent wrapped the 6-year-old boy in a white blanket and, with the help of a male agent, carried him outside to a van. Her expression was anguished as she faced the glare of reporters cameras and protesters outside the house. Protesters threw chairs and other objects at the agents, who responded by firing pepper smoke into the crowd. No serious injuries were reported.

Elián was then whisked to Watson Island, near Miami Beach, where he was transported by helicopter to Homestead Air Force Base, some 20 miles south of Miami. He was then flown in a U.S. Marshal's plane to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where under extraordinary secrecy, he was reunited with his father, Juan Miguel González. The site was closed to the media, and officials said the family would likely remain there for several days.

By early afternoon, at least three of the boy's Miami relatives -- including his cousin Marisleysis and great uncle Lazaro -- had followed suit, boarding a plane for Washington. Once there, they planned to request meetings with Juan Miguel and President Clinton.

A hearing is scheduled in federal court May 11 to consider the Miami family's petition that the boy be allowed to stay in the U.S. A federal district court in Atlanta has also ordered that the boy not be removed from the U.S. before that hearing. Juan Miguel González's attorney said the father had no intention of trying to do that.

"Juan González has made a commitment to stay in the United States during this appeal and he will live up to that commitment," said Gregory Craig.

The raid came two days after President Clinton stated the boy should be reunited with his father. But when asked Saturday if he had ordered the raid, he denied having done so.

"She (Reno) managed this, but I fully support what she did," the president said.

Accordingly, members of the Miami González family and their supporters attacked Clinton.

Speaking to reporters inside the family's house, an emotional Marisleysis González had harsh words for Janet Reno and the president. "He dishonored his own family and now he has dishonored mine," she said, with a reference to Clinton's sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinsky.

Marisleysis González said the raid took the family by surprise. "We were talking to them," she said of the Justice Department negotiators. "Then they put us on hold and when we were on hold they pounded on the door."

In the house at the time was Donato Dalrymple, one of two fishermen who rescued the boy from the sea on Thanksgiving Day after his mother and other rafters drowned in an attempt to escape Cuba. Dalrymple was hiding with the boy in a closet. Marisleysis accused the federal agents of pointing a rifle at the boy, but Reno later denied that. Dramatic news photos taken by an Associated Press photographer who was inside the house, also indicated that weapons were brandished but were not pointed at the boy and the INS agent did not have his finger on the trigger.

Reno and other Justice Department officials had conducted negotiations by telephone all night with González family attorneys and other Miami community leaders who were in the Little Havana house. But she said those negotiations failed and she had no alternative but to order the raid.

"Up until the last we tried anyway we could to encourage Lazaro González to deliver the child to his father," she said at a Washington press conference after the raid. "But every time we thought we had achieved what they wanted, it was not enough." She said González consistently placed "roadblocks" in the negotiations.

Reno defended the use of armed agents. "We had received information there were guns perhaps in the crowd, perhaps in the house," she said. "We knew this could be traumatic. We set it up in a way to minimize that." INS' Doris Meissner said the boy had been given toys to play with on the plane, including Play-Doh, which children can squeeze to reduce stress.

Meissner said the unidentified female agent who took the boy from the house also accompanied him to Washington. The agent was prepared to talk to the child and tell him he was being reunited with his father, and to assure him that he was not being sent back to Cuba or put back on a raft -- a fear the child had expressed, according to his Miami relatives.

Next page | "Clinton and his people will pay for this"