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Al Hunt did stop short of predicting something so horrible it could never happen in America--federal marshals armed with assault weapons hunting down children cowering in closets to forcibly return them to a Communist dictatorship. Oh, wait, that really did happen, under President Bill Clinton, when Elian Gonzalez was returned to Cuba at the point of a gun. On today's Morning Joe, an Al Hunt on the verge of hysteria predicted that Donald Trump's immigration plan would lead to "federal raids on maternity wards." He claimed that implementing the plan would cost "11 trillion dollars," which assuming 11 million illegals...

On Monday, soon after the New York Times slammed Florida senator Marco Rubio as Cuba's “least favorite son,” the 2016 GOP presidential candidate fired back, accusing reporter Jason Horowitz of using the “Castro regime's propaganda” in his article, which was entitled “Marco Rubio Is Hardly a Hero in Cuba. He Likes That.” In a Twitter message, Rubio asserted that the newspaper was following up its “scoops” attacking him for getting 17 speeding tickets -- most of which were actually received by his wife – and its article accusing him of owning “a luxury speedboat” that is only one-third as long...

The recent surrender of America’s tough line against Cuban communism got me to thinking about various moments in Cuban-American history. Not long ago, I noted the 21st birthday of Elian Gonzalez, the boy returned to his father in Cuba after his mother died in a 1999 attempt to bring him to America in a small aluminum boat. The talk-show wars were furious during that winter and spring of fifteen years ago. I explained to callers that I shared their wish for Elian to grow up in America, and their lament at the prospect of returning him to the communist dictatorship...

Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban who at the age of 6 was found floating in waters of Florida’s coastline, after the boat he was sailing with his mother capsized, said in a recent interview he’d like more than anything to visit the United States.

Elian Gonzalez would like to return to the United States, he tells ABC News in an exclusive interview. "To the American people, first I say thank you for the love they give me," Gonzalez said. "I want the time to give my love to American people." Gonzalez was found floating off of Florida's coast in 1999, after the boat he was in with his mother capsized. Gonzalez stayed with his uncle in Miami, but the 6-year-old boy soon found himself at the center of a tug of war between Cuba and the United States over whether he should remain in...

Havana -- Fifteen years ago today two fishermen plucked an exhausted, frightened five-year-old tied to an inner tube out of the waters off the coast of Ft. Lauderdale. Elian Gonzalez, less than two weeks short of his 6th birthday, was the young Cuban boy whose rescue set off an international custody battle and reverberated in the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign. Now nearly 21 and out of the public eye, Gonzalez is studying industrial engineering at the university in his home province of Matanzas in Cuba.

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...

<p>The US government, which has refused to act decisively to control the horde of children entering the US via Mexico from Central America (estimated to be nearly 60,000 from October 2013 to June 2014) certainly had no compunctions about expelling a helpless child back to terrible conditions in the case of Elian Gonzalez back in 1999 during the Clinton regime.  In that case, the Feds were wrong to send a child back to a communist dictatorship, where he lives today, a member of the Union of Young Communists, propagandist for the regime, and personal “friend” of Fidel Castro.</p>

Madness has gripped our border. I am not talking about the migrant children fleeing from crime and violence in their home countries in Central America and looking for the opportunity to live a better life. I am talking about the misguided protesters—and the right-wing public officials that egg them on, railing against anything they think even might be an immigrant. Republicans need to get hold of themselves, understand facts and keep their anti-immigrant extremist voices in check. If they don't do it for the country's future, they should at least do it for their own political survival. Republicans cannot afford...

Attorney General Eric Holder can hardly contain his tears when explaining his program titled “Justice AmeriCorps,” to provide emergency legal representation for the tens of thousands of Central American minors crashing our southern border. “How we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings, many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution, abuse or trafficking – goes to the core of who we are as a nation,” Holder said while detailing his program to provide 100 lawyers and paralegals for the minors. And yet it was (then) Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder who concocted the “legal”...

Border: Democrats and our attorney general once favored the forcible return of alien minors to their country of origin, but that was when the country was Castro's Cuba and the horrible condition they fled was communism. Eric Holder made a very emotional plea the other day when he announced the Obama administration program "Justice AmeriCorps," intended to provide emergency legal representation to the tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors flooding across our open southern border from Central America. "How we treat those in need, particularly young people who must appear in immigration proceedings, many of whom are fleeing violence, persecution,...

HAVANA (AP) - Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy who survived a boat sinking and became a political football during the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign as the subject of an international custody fight, is on his first trip overseas since being reunited with his father. Cuban state-run media say Gonzalez is in Ecuador this week as part of a 200-strong delegation to the 23rd World Festival of Youth and Students, which runs through Friday. In a recent interview published on the official website Cubadebate, Gonzalez said living in Cuba afforded him more privacy than if he had stayed in the...

Elian Gonzalez, the focus of a bitter international custody dispute after he was rescued at sea as a child, left Cuba on Friday for the first time since 2000, when the U.S. government returned him to the island. Gonzalez, who also turned 20 on Friday, traveled to Quito, Ecuador, as part of a 200-member Cuban delegation to a weeklong youth conference there. "Fidel Castro for me is like a father," Gonzalez said in the recent interview. "I don't profess to have any religion but if I did my God would be Fidel Castro. He is like a ship that knew...

The New Black Panther Party threatened Philadelphia voters with billy clubs and Eric Holder’s justice department couldn’t be bothered. CAIR was accused of fundraising for Hamas, and Eric Holder shrugged. But back when Fidel Castro demanded the return of an escaped slave, Eric Holder snapped to attention, clicked his heels, and sprung to action. It is scrupulous legality, we’re given to understand by Mr. Holder, that prevents his Department from prosecutions against the New Black Panthers and CAIR. But regarding scrupulous legality, Fox News Andrew Napolitano had (then Deputy) Attorney General Eric Holder’s number way back in April 23rd...

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the soi-disant Cordoba Initiative, has gotten all the attention he deserves for his astonishingly insensitive attempt to build a 13-story mosque and community center at the site of Ground Zero. Rauf has largely escaped attention for his efforts to build a sawed-off version of the same on the grounds of the venerable and historically Christian Chautauqua Institution in western New York State. Although the resistance to Rauf at Chautauqua has not made the news, it is deeply felt, and it is coming from both Christians and Jews. As shall be seen, the forced feeding...

Elian Gonzalez says he's not angry at his Miami relatives who fought to keep him in the United States during a nasty international custody battle a decade ago, and is thankful "a large part of the American public" supported him being reunited with his father in Cuba. Now 16, Gonzalez's first comments to foreign reporters in years came after President Raul Castro attended a state celebration Wednesday night marking the 10th anniversary of the famous ex-castaway's return to the island. "Even though they didn't help me in every way possible, they didn't help me move forward, they are still my...

Elian Gonzalez case - 10 years later When federal agents stormed a home in the Little Havana community, snatched Elian Gonzalez from his father's relatives and put him on a path back to his father in Cuba, thousands of Cuban Americans took to Miami's streets. Their anger helped give George W. Bush the White House months later and simmered long after that. Ten years later, the Little Havana home - for weeks the epicenter of a standoff that divided the United States - is a museum dedicated to Elian's brief time in this country, but visitors are rare. Almost no...

I couldn't believe my ears. About 5 minutes ago, Andrea Mitchell posted a photo of a now 16-year-old Elian Gonzalez on her MSNBC afternoon show, donning a Cuban military uniform and flanked by Cuban commandos of some sort, and she said: "It's so nice to see Elian at 16!" What the hell does that mean? He's totally brainwashed, Andrea!

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba has released photos of one-time exile cause celebre Elian Gonzalez wearing an olive-green military school uniform and attending a Young Communist Union congress. Gonzalez, now 16 with closely cropped black hair, is shown serious-faced with fellow youth delegates during last weekend's congress at a sprawling and drab convention center in western Havana. The images were posted Monday on Cuban government Web sites, then widely picked up by electronic, state-controlled media. When he was 5, Elian was found floating off the coast of Florida in an inner tube after his mother and others fleeing Cuba drowned trying...

Careful, Mr O’Keefe ! Don’t go there! Nothing in the FBI affidavit even hints that you brushed with the type of swinishness and ethical squalor 60 Minutes was capable of, especially on April 16, 2000. I’ll report. Y’all decide: On April 16, 2000, viewers of CBS’ 60 Minutes saw Dan Rather interviewing Elian Gonzalez’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. America saw a bewildered and heartsick father simply pleading to be allowed to have his motherless son accompany him back to Cuba, his cherished homeland. How could anyone oppose this? How could simple decency and common sense possibly allow for anything else?...