Posted on 09/27/2014 5:01:59 AM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
Don’t let that pre-Attorney General debacle go down the memory hole.
As we count down Eric Holder’s greatest hits, the first image that comes to the mind of many Americans isn’t that of Brian Terry, or of Black Panthers outside polling places, but of a screaming child staring down the barrel of a rifle.
On April 22, 2000, just before dawn, U.S federal agents executed a full-blown raid on the home of five year old Elian Gonzalez, seizing the child and setting in motion procedures to send Elian and his father back to Cuba.
I was only a freshman in high school when this happened, but I remember seeing news stories about what it meant to be a refugee from Cuba, and wondering why in the world the government would ignore everything that this kid had been through. Why were they taking him away from his family? Why was there so much yelling? Why were they pointing a gun at a kid who was younger than my baby cousin?
Why? This is Eric Holder’s legacy.
The Elian Gonzalez case predates Holder’s tenure as Attorney General, but even before his appointment to the DoJ, Holder displayed a stunning lack of accountability and a tone deaf attitude toward those who dared to question the decisions of the Department of Justice:
In the period before armed agents seized the child, the Justice Department had been leaking its intention to avoid any sort of armed intervention. It would all be done quietly, they suggested. When top Department officials were asked about it, they said nothing to change that impression. About two weeks before the raid, Tim Russert asked Holder, “You wouldn’t send a SWAT team in the dark of night to kidnap the child, in effect?” Holder answered, “No, we don’t expect anything like that to happen.” Then the Department did precisely that. The day after the seizure, Holder appeared again with Russert, who asked, “Why such a dramatic change in position?” “I’m not sure I’d call it a dramatic change,” Holder answered. “We waited ’til five in the morning, just before dawn.”
The dramatic nature of the DoJ’s raid aside, what’s important to remember about what happened in the Elian Gonzalez case is Holder’s failure to enforce immigration law, and to recognize Gonzalez’s status as a refugee, and instead choosing to focus on the parental rights of Elian Gonzalez’s father.
This shift in focus tore a family apart, and set events in motion that have led to Elian (now 20 years old) being used as a tool of the Castro regime:
"Gonzalez said he blamed the US for the death of his mother, who drowned along with nine other people en route to Florida 14 years ago. “Just like her, many others have died attempting to go to the United States,” Gonzalez said. “But it’s the US government’s fault. Their unjust embargo provokes an internal and critical economic situation in Cuba.”The hostile relationship between the U.S. and Cuba has long been the cause of broken families, and when Holder ignored the law and allowed Elian to be taken back to Cuba, he allowed Castro to score a political point on behalf of a dangerous, oppressive regime.
Gonzalez is in Ecuador for the World Festival of Youths and Students, which he’s been asked to speak at. “The main reason we’re here is because we want a revolutionary progressive movement that leads to socialism,” he says. And no, he’s not upset the US sent him back; he describes Cuban life as “magnificent,” and says being dragged from his relatives’ home at gunpoint left no mental scars.
This is the man who spent six years as Barack Obama’s confidant and #1 law enforcement officer. Holder has resigned, but nothing can change what happened to Elian and his family, and the events he set in motion by allowing the law (and the best interests of a small child) to be set aside.
He was involved in the subsequent “investigation” (read: cover-up) in 1997, four years after the raid. He was a DC Superior Court (basically the local court for DC) when Waco happened, had no involvement in the raid itself.
What did holder have to do with Waco?
Elian's father came to America before the raid but was always under the watchful eye of his minders and never had a chance to say what he really thought. If Clinton had been concerned for Elian's father's rights (the first time ever for the Clinton administration to care about a father's rights), he could have offered Elian's father the opportunity to live in Florida along with his son. But the whole reason he wanted Elian sent back to Cuba was that Fidel demanded it.
https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/325/325.F3d.1228.01-14475.html
“......On September 28, 2000, the Gonzalezes commenced this action under Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents of Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 403 U.S. 388, 91 S.Ct. 1999, 29 L.Ed.2d 619 (1971), by filing a complaint for damages against Attorney General Janet Reno, in her individual capacity; INS Commissioner Doris Meissner, in her individual capacity; Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder, in his individual capacity; INS agent Betty Mills; an unknown number of INS agents whose names are not known; an unknown number of U.S. Border Patrol agents whose names are not known; and an unknown number of U.S. Marshals whose names are not known.1 In their complaint, the Gonzalezes allege the following facts. On November 25, 1999, six-year-old Elian Gonzalez, a Cuban boy, was found floating on an innertube off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The Coast Guard brought Elian into the United States, and the INS paroled him into the country without inspection, then released him into the custody of his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez (”Lazaro”). Lazaro filed a petition with the INS on behalf of Elian seeking political asylum for the child. Elian also filed a petition for asylum on his own behalf.
On January 5, 2000, INS Commissioner Meissner decided that the INS would not consider the requests for asylum because Elian’s father, a Cuban citizen, had requested that Elian be returned to Cuba. On January 7, 2000, Lazaro filed a petition for temporary custody of Elian in the Family Division of the Circuit Court for Miami-Dade County, which was granted pending a full hearing on the matter...........
...........On April 19, 2000, a panel of this court entered an order enjoining Elian from departing, or attempting to depart, the United States; enjoining all persons acting on his behalf from aiding, or assisting or attempting to aid or assist, Elian’s removal from the United States; and enjoining all officers, agents, and employees of the United States to take such reasonable and lawful measures as necessary to prevent the removal of Elian from the United States. Gonzalez, supra. On April 20, 2000, the Gonzalezes began negotiations with Reno, Meissner, and Holder toward the goal of transferring temporary custody of Elian.
Even though it was purporting to negotiate a peaceful transfer of the child, the INS issued an administrative warrant for Elian’s arrest on April 21, 2000. The arrest warrant asserted that Elian was within the United States in violation of the immigration laws and could therefore be taken into custody. The INS then obtained a search warrant to enter the Gonzalezes’ home and search for Elian...........
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/668834/posts?page=8
“Contrary to recent media accounts, an internal U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service memo indicating the father of Elian Gonzalez was coerced by the Cuban government was made public two years ago but ignored by the press.
The Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post published reports last week on hearings held in the case of an INS agent who accuses the agency of harboring an anti-Cuban bias, especially in its handling of the Elian Gonzalez asylum case.
The reports indicated a memo authored by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig was made public April 9.
The document, however, was obtained by the Washington, D.C.-based legal watchdog group Judicial Watch and posted on its website in the spring of 2000. The public interest law firm also drew up a press release concerning the memo.
The only new information to surface April 9 was a handwritten note by Sanchez-Roig at the bottom of her memo referring to an order by then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner to destroy or delete all copies of it. But the information contained in that note also was known outside of the INS office a full two years ago.
The memo, a summary of an INS teleconference on the matter, was produced at a hearing for special agent Rick Ramirez, whose corruption and discrimination case before the Merit System Protection Board in Miami was brought by Judicial Watch.
The memo indicated that the U.S. government had reason to believe Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was being coerced, monitored and coached by Cuban government operatives in his statements. It also said that the father had applied for asylum.
The memo specified that Elian’s father had made his “own attempts to depart Cuba,” and had made two phone calls “from a pay phone in Cuba” to let his family in Miami know that Elian was coming. In addition, “the Cuban government installed what somebody described as a speaker phone” in the father’s home in Cuba so that Cuban government agents could coach him on what to say.
Why did the major media ignore much of the critical available information? A prominent Cuban-American editor in Miami, who declined to be named, explained that the press and the public “didn’t want to hear” it.
“Cuban-Americans are not politically correct,” he said.
The editor added that had the memo been covered well at the time it was made public, “more people would have voted against Al Gore.”
The editor called it a “very sorry and dirty affair, a terrible thing. Nobody believed us.”
The Cuban-American community was talking about all of the things covered in this memo, he said.
“We were kicked in the face,” the editor said. “The major media and the Clinton administration presented it as though we deserved [the outcome].”................”
As in the guy holding the gun did not wrap his finger around the trigger? Something neither Elian nor the man holding him could see?
Holder is a real piece of $#!+.
Saw that on television. That was the morning I became a Freeper
Bill Clinton will burn in Hell for all eternity for sending Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba
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