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Civil war in Miami?
The battle over Elián has led non-Cubans to threaten secession, and to back a recall drive against the mayor.
By John Lantigua
[05/11/00]

What Elián learned in Georgetown
Unlike Cuban homes, American houses have swimming pools in the basement.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/11/00]

A little boy's night on the town
A Georgetown society dinner for the Cuban refugee raises eyebrows -- and thickly mascaraed lashes.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/10/00]

The White (House) conference on teens
Columbine made teenage problems national news -- but kids need community action, not anemic P.R.
By Arianna Huffington
[05/10/00]

"A concentration camp on American soil"
Sen. Bob Smith offers a new description for the Cuban boy's Wye Plantation digs.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/09/00]

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Within the normally dispassionate domain of that Atlanta federal courtroom, now infected by the overwrought atmosphere of the Elián González saga, it was questions that were flying like hailstones, the three judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals doubling the time normally allotted to allow Craig, lawyers for great-uncle Lazaro and the Justice Department to argue the merits of the boy's political-asylum application submitted by his Miami relations.

Those hoping for a quick and easy resolution of the Elián quagmire -- for a judicial version of Janet Reno's lightning extrication of the boy from Lazaro González's Little Havana home April 22 -- will not find it in Thursday's hearing. It began with senior Judge J.L. Edmondson of Atlanta warning that a ruling would not come for at least "a few weeks." Then, 90 minutes of intense questioning from judges Edmondson, Joel Dubina and Charles Wilson made it clear that to this panel, at least, the Elián González case is rife with troubling and difficult legal questions.

By all accounts it was Wilson -- a Clinton appointee from Tampa, Fla. -- who most definitively took the Little Miami team to the cleaners, wondering how a 6-year-old could possibly be competent to fill out an asylum form, which asks -- among other things -- whether the applicant has associated with political, paramilitary or human rights groups.

"I'm sure Elián González is a very bright and intelligent 6-year-old, but he didn't even have the ability to sign his last name on the asylum petition," Wilson observed.

On the other hand, Edmondson, a Reagan appointee, ruminated on Juan González's determination to return Elián to "a Communist, totalitarian state." He compared it to cases where courts have found parents' wishes "conspicuously in conflict with the needs of the child" -- as when children are denied medical care for religious reasons, for instance.

On the surface, it is hard to see today's appeal as anything but another judicial Bay of Pigs for the Miami relatives -- a doomed beachhead, like all their gambits since Elián's arrival. "Whether or not Lazaro González wins this appeal, he loses the case," says professor David Cole of Georgetown University Law Center, who has handled high-profile immigration appeals.

There is simply no precedent to support a 6-year-old's asylum claim, and no facts on the record about either his father or Cuba to support it. The Immigration and Naturalization Service and a Miami federal judge have already rejected the asylum application the relatives filed on behalf of Elián. Even if Lazaro's Miami lawyers win Thursday's arguments, all they achieve is an asylum hearing for Elián before an INS which already declared the idea of this boy's political persecution nonsensical.

And there is no appeal to federal courts for INS rulings: Just ask the thousands of undocumented immigrants languishing in immigration jails awaiting deportaiton.

But the Miami relatives are not really banking on an asylum win. Instead, Lazaro and the Cuban-American political strategists behind him are playing for something far more fundamental: time.

Why time? Perhaps in hopes that father Juan will decide to stay in the United States. More likely, with the expectation that if they draw the case out until November, the presidential election will bring an attorney general more friendly to their cause.

"November is an important date," says Mike Wishnie of New York University Law School, an immigration law specialist. "The dynamic of the presidential election changes everything. If they can keep the case going until November, and convince the 11th Circuit to extend the injunction keeping Elián here pending appeal, Janet Reno may be reluctant to act" on the boy's deportation.

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