<p.For my friend...the fisherman.Posted on 04/14/2002 9:11:12 PM PDT by Pokey78
New evidence suggests that INS chief Doris Meissner knew that Elian's father was acting under duress. And that she tried to suppress it.
REPORTER ALFONSO CHARDY wrote an important but little-noticed article for last Wednesday's Miami Herald. It adds to the proofs that we never got the whole story behind the Clinton administration's case for deporting 6-year-old boat person Elian Gonzalez back to Fidel Castro's Cuba. Young Elian had fled the island on a rickety raft in November 1999, with a mother who drowned on the voyage.
On January 5, 2000, INS commissioner Doris Meissner ordered that Elian be sent back to his father and to Fidel Castro--an order that was enforced three months later when Attorney General Janet Reno sent shock troops with automatic weapons to spirit Elian from the Miami home where he had been staying with his uncles.
Meissner's main grounds were that Elian should be with his closest remaining relative, and in this she claimed to be arguing from precedent. "Family reunification," Meissner said, "has long been a cornerstone of both American immigration law and INS practice." Sure. But as we noted in The Weekly Standard at the time, unifying families has generally meant bringing them together in free societies, not repressive ones. No one ever suggested in the 1970s that we return refusenik relatives to Brezhnev's Russia, or in the 1980s that Sandinista opponents in Miami be sent to Nicaragua to be forcibly reunited with their persecuted families.
Meissner never addressed the evidence that Juan Miguel Gonzalez was acting under coercion when he requested his son be sent back to Cuba. If Chardy's story is correct, she may even have suppressed such evidence. An unrelated complaint by an INS agent brought to light a memo written by INS attorney Rebeca Sanchez-Roig on December 29, 1999--a week before Meissner made her decision to send Elian back. (The memo was unearthed by the Washington watchdog group Judicial Watch.) According to Sanchez-Roig, INS officials believed Elian's father was being monitored by the Cuban government when he made the angry calls to the United States demanding Elian's return. He also may have previously sought to immigrate to the United States.
The INS--i.e. Meissner, reporting to Reno, reporting to President Clinton--rejected out of hand Elian's standing to apply for political asylum (PA). But that was apparently not the advice Meissner received from Sanchez-Roig, who said that the U.S. government could "potentially accept the child's asylum's application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing application. As such PA should proceed."
And that is far from the most infuriating revelation. According to Chardy, "Hand-scrawled notes at the bottom of the two-page memo said then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner ordered the destruction of the memo one day after it was written when she learned of its existence. According to the notes, Meissner ordered that no more discussions related to Elian be committed to writing." Luckily for the cause of truth, someone at the INS had forwarded the e-mail out of the system by the time Meissner tried to sweep over her traces.
Reuters recently noted that Juan Miguel Gonzalez told Cuba's state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) that his son, when he grows up, "wants to be a policeman, a TV artist or an astronaut." The paper's censors must have thought the astronaut remark indicated that Elian is comfortable enough in Castro's Cuba to want to play a role in it someday. To our ears, it indicated a boy who would prefer to live in a country that has a space program.
I echo cricket's bump for sanity, though I do not hold out hope for finding it in this mess. A little boy and the country were used for perverse political means and protection -- that's cold and insane. -- cynic#456,789
<p.For my friend...the fisherman.ThankYOU Cyn. . .
. . .this travesty must remain firmly etched in America's consciousness; we cannot have Elian become a fuzzy memory in the 'public mind'. . .
. . .have been trying to find 'updated' information re Elian by way of 'Elian' sites. . .but cannot find any that are current. Are there any?
. . .with prayers and a Bump for Elian. . .
Evil is an acronym for:
E - every
V - villain
I - is
L - Liberal
The Miami Gonzales family are truly inspiring and heroic.
Anyone who would vote to elect Clinton or Reno is your enemy, the enemy of America.
Well said.
More than any other Clinton crime, the Elian Gonzalez abduction, kidnapping, and brut thug forced return to Cuba's Communist Gulag identified the Clinton administration as the Godless, brutal, communistic, criminal regime that it was.
Some day - one day - the people of Cuba - and Elian will be free! We will ALWAYS continue to pray, work, and lobby for this!
The INS--i.e. Meissner, reporting to Reno, reporting to President Clinton--rejected out of hand Elian's standing to apply for political asylum (PA). But that was apparently not the advice Meissner received from Sanchez-Roig, who said that the U.S. government could "potentially accept the child's asylum's application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing application. As such PA should proceed."
And that is far from the most infuriating revelation. According to Chardy, "Hand-scrawled notes at the bottom of the two-page memo said then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner ordered the destruction of the memo one day after it was written when she learned of its existence. According to the notes, Meissner ordered that no more discussions related to Elian be committed to writing." Luckily for the cause of truth, someone at the INS had forwarded the e-mail out of the system by the time Meissner tried to sweep over her traces.
An enraged bump. Howlin, I've pinged you here because I remember we debated this issue. With all due respect to your position regarding parental rights, here is some evidence that Juan Miguel was acting under duress. Had both he and Elian been granted their day in court, we could have known the truth.
It is a sound, respectable debate about the rights of a child to seek asylum versus the wishes of the parents. But when the Clinton Administration got involved, the debate was bastardized.
A position subsequently upheld by the 11th Circuit.
Now, being presented with facts that change that equation -- AND investigated by no less than Christopher Caldwell, who I respect as a journalist -- it would be foolish of me to stick to that position now, wouldn't it?
Unless, of course, I was a butthead, which, as most of you know, I am not......LOL. Perhaps, in hindsight, I should have realized that every single word that came out of that administration was a lie.
If I could have one wish, it would be that George W. Bush would rid the government of these lying, thieving, immoral people. I don't think that's a lot to ask; and it would be more than enough for me, regardless of whatever else he does while he's in office.
I would so dearly like to be able to BELIEVE the people who run my government.
Happy to see that you have admitted to being misled by the masters of appearances-only in this sad affair of a young boy escaped from the prison isle, only to be dragged back to it.
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