Reno Can Be Sued Over Elian Gonzalez Raid

October 4, 2001

A federal judge in Florida has ruled that former Attorney General Janet Reno can be sued over last year's raid on the Miami home where Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez was staying.

U.S. District Judge Michael Moore rejected Reno's claim that her position as attorney general gave her immunity from being sued for ordering the raid, which forcibly removed Gonzalez from his home and reunited him with his estranged father.

The Associated Press says 52 people have sued Reno and two other officials for at least $100 million, saying they were gassed, beaten, and threatened during the raid.

Elian Gonzalez was rescued at sea in late 1999 after the boat taking his him and his mother to the United States sank. The boy’s mother died in the accident, and the boy's Miami relatives fought to keep him in the United States. But the Clinton-Gore administration said that Gonzalez should be returned to Cuba to be with his estranged father.

On the order of Reno, federal agents armed with submachine guns and teargas seized Gonzalez from the home of his Miami relatives before dawn on Saturday, April 22, 2000, and flew the 6-year-old to Washington to the custody of his father. Gonzalez was flown to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, later moved to the Wye Plantation, and then returned to Cuba.

The federal agents, numbering 160, surrounded the home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, at 5 a.m. on the Saturday of Easter weekend. The agents, belonging to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Border Patrol, kicked in the door of the home. According to Marisleysis Gonzalez, Elian’s cousin, the agents threatened to "blow her brains out." Photos taken inside the home during the raid showed a helmeted agent holding a submachine gun pointed at Elian, who was being held by Donato Dalrymple, one of the fishermen who rescued him from the Atlantic Ocean on Thanksgiving Day of 1999. A short time later, the agents dashed from the home with a terrified Elian and shoved him in the van to drive him to the airport.

"They were animals," reported bystander Jess Garcia at the time. "They gassed women and children to take a defenseless child out of here. We were assaulted with no provocation." Within an hour of the raid, the crowd in Little Havana quickly swelled. Some of the crowd held hands and prayed.

Federal agents said that the use of force was necessary because of the possibility that the Gonzalez family was armed. However, the agents found no guns in the home. The Gonzalez family was in the midst of telephone negotiations with the Justice Department at the time of Elian’s seizure. It appears that the negotiations were only a ruse by the Justice Department. The news media had earlier reported that the Justice Department would not attempt to take Elian during the Easter weekend. However, this turned out to be deliberate deception on the part of the Justice Department.

The pre-dawn raid was even more surprising because Senator Bob Graham, Florida Democrat, had recently made a plea, in the Oval Office, that if the government went to Elian's home to seize him, it should not do so at night. "The president of the United States made that commitment to me," says Graham, "that there would be no taking of this child at night." It appears that the President lied to Senator Graham.

On April 12th of 1999, 10 days before the raid, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that Elian stay in the United States pending an appeal on a request for an asylum hearing. The court’s ruling stated that the INS had acted illegally in denying, without a hearing, Elian’s request for asylum. The Justice Department had asked the appeals court to order Lazaro Gonzalez to hand over Elian--something the boy's great-uncle refused to do when the Immigration and Naturalization Service gave him similar instructions. The Appeals Court did not grant the Justice Department request, but Clinton and Reno decided that the Appeals Court decision would not prevent them from taking the boy by force.

Although Reno demonstrated great perserverance and disregard of the law in kicking the 6-year old Elian Gonzalez out of the country over a child-custody dispute, she did not show similar zeal in dealing with characters like Mohammed Atta. Atta, according to press reports, already was suspected by German authorities of having some ties with some terrorist activity when he obtained his first visa from the U.S. consulate in Berlin. That alone should have resulted in a denial of the visa. But he entered the United States, said he was going to stay at a New York City hotel but never showed up. He then promptly overstayed his visa by 30 days. Atta later hijacked one of the jets that slammed into the World Trade Center in New York City, killing 7000 people in the deadliest terrorist attack in history. But it seems that Reno considered Elian Gonzalez a more dangerous threat than Mohammed Atta.

Reno is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida.

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