Word: gonzalez
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...Elian Gonzalez, finally some peace and quiet. Ending five months of traumatic public scrutiny, federal agents quickly and painlessly whisked the six-year-old Cuban boy from his relatives' house in raucous Miami to an air base near Washington, D.C., where he spent Easter Sunday with his father. Thankfully, there he will stay, insulated from the violence in Little Havana and games of political football, until a court rules on his application for political asylum...
...federal agents could have been avoided. By all accounts, it was not the ideal decision for Attorney General Janet Reno, who repeatedly extended deadlines for the Gonzalez family. But Elian's relatives showed no intention of ever turning over the boy to his father, even though immigration law clearly gives custody to the surviving parent. While negotiations stalled, a team of expert psychologists and pediatricians charged by the government to monitor Elian's health concluded that the boy would suffer tremendous emotional strain if he was not returned to his father. Even more troubling was a video released...
Images are the weapon of choice in the war over Elian Gonzalez, which may be why his Miami relatives are claiming that the photographs of the boy smiling happily as he was reunited with his father were faked. Elian's second cousin Marisleysis Gonzalez charged, during an emotional media conference in Washington on Sunday, that Saturday's pictures released by Juan Miguel Gonzalez's lawyers showing Elian warmly hugging his father and playing with his six-month-old half brother, Hianny, were somehow fabricated, because the boy's hair in the pictures was supposedly longer than at the time...
...from his home of almost six months. Juan Miguel's Miami relatives are clearly in no mood to let go of the boy, however, and followed Elian to Washington within hours of his removal from their home, attempting unsuccessfully to gain access to the air base where Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his family have sequestered themselves. The father indicated, through his lawyer, that he and Elian would be prepared to meet the Miami relatives only once emotions have cooled, but judging by Sunday's media conference that's unlikely to be anytime soon...
...even if Congress becomes embroiled in debating whether Janet Reno was too heavy-handed or whether the Miami family's tactics left her no choice, that discussion ultimately remains a political postmortem that will pertain more to the battle for votes in November than to the future of Elian Gonzalez. Even as an election issue, the fact that millions of American voters were clearly horrified by the enforcement operation may be canceled out by the fact that a majority favored returning the boy to his father. And although Juan Miguel Gonzalez remains legally obliged to wait out his relatives' appeals...