Illegal Elian

...Notorious criminals aside, the simple fact that the INS spent so much time on an individual case is highly unusual...

...Tim Russert asked Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder on "Meet the Press" nearly two weeks before the raid...

...marshals and immigration agents in minimum force and civilian clothes, with no drawn guns...

...The two sides--the Gonzalez family and the INS--were in the middle of litigating the issue of Elian's application for asylum...

...They ordinarily reserve these kinds of active measures for bringing in aggravated [ l ~ ~ ~ ] felonies," Eig reasoned...

...One of the main members of the Gonzalez team was completely out of the loop at the most critical moment in the entire standoff...

...Still, he could not make any calls until nightfall, when the Sabbath ended...

...government was not going to raid an innocent family...

...Then, with the issue unresolved, the government blew the case wide open by taking the child...

...Taken just moments ago, it proves beyond a doubt that I am happy to be here," he said as the audience caught on to the joke...

...attorney in New Orleans, in 1994 Eig moved to Miami, where he spent the next five years trying immigration cases...

...Looking for highly publicized, high-impact busts, agents specifically targeted places where they were likely to find large numbers of aliens-- and spent relatively little, if any, energy on time-consuming efforts to pick up individual immigrants...

...Would the INS take drastic action...

...law recognize the rights of children to apply for asylum...

...And it didn't take long before Republicans on Capitol Hill began to back off their vows to hold hearings to investigate the raid...

...I thought the U.S...

...The assembled reporters, editors, mm~f~'r'r'r'r'r~- ,, and media insiders burst into laughter...

...The arrest warrant/search warrant stratagem, in particular, seems more like a clever trick than a measured response to the situation...

...At the dinner, Clinton began his remarks by pointing to a photo of himself with a broad smile on his face...

...After their initial anger subsided, some critics conceded the INS likely had the legal authority to act as it did...

...It was a clear example of the defendant kidnapping the plaintiff because the lawsuit wasn't going well," says Eig...

...The crowd laughed and applauded...

...He then entered a period of intensive religious celebration in a household that did not have a television...

...26 June 2000 _9 The American Spectator "There was no age limit...

...The government deployed a total of 151 people, 131 from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and 2o from the United States Marshals...

...the backlog of people seeking naturalization is nearly two million...

...Some of our Cuban colleagues said they thought there would be...

...A party being held after the dinner was so exclusive, Clinton said, that almost no one got an invitation...

...We believe that international law and U.S...

...Holder stood by his words...

...We don't expect anything like that to happen...

...I attributed that to their experiences with the Castro government and thought they were overly paranoid...

...Pointing to pictures showing the smiling child with Juan Miguel Gonzalez, they said Elian's hair appeared longer than it had in photographs taken that morning during the raid...

...An observant Jew, Eig left Miami on Wednesday, April 19 to spend Passover with his wife's family in St...

...To say the attorney general alone determines who has that right is troubling...

...Then-- voila!--after the seizure the INS declared Elian to be legal again and gave custody to his father, Juan Miauel Gonzalez...

...Beyond that, the very fact the raid took place at all did enormous violence to the spirit of due process...

...In recent years the INS has been stung by criticism that its enforcement work consisted mostly of raiding farms, fast-food restaurants, and other places where undoc ~ . d ~ ~ umented ~ , ~ I ] ~ ,, ~ | ~ aliens eke out a living...

...The agents who actually would go to the house might not even be armed...

...J Top Justice Department officials did nothing to correct the impression that they would exercise restraint...

...The American Spectator _9 JurLe 20 o o 27...

...But I'm not worried," he added...

...his original statement was true, he explained, because "We waited 'til five in the morning, just before dawn...

...Fearing the heavily armed IRA might stage an attack to disrupt the transfer, American officials made sure they were well-prepared for any possibility...

...The guidelines, according to the INS, were developed in consultation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, as had an earlier set of policies making it easier for women to seek asylum...

...They weren't really searching for him, and they weren't really arresting him...

...But that does not mean the Gonzalez matter will disappear...

...The happy pictures must have been doctored...

...fou wouldn't send a SWAT team in the dark of night to kidnap the child, in effect...

...Why the case was so important--so urgent that the INS would throw its own policies and guidelines out the window-- is a question the agency has yet to answer...

...Last August, for example, the INS in Los Angeles required far fewer agents to capture a suspect named Manuel Escalante, who was BYRON YORK is The American Spectator's senior writer...

...Enforcement against individual aliens sank even lower down the priority list...

...Whatever its goal, the INS has been plagued by gross mismanagement...

...The day after the seizure, Holder appeared again with Russert, who asked, "Why such a dramatic change in position...

...We took a lot of extraordinary measures," says Rees...

...I think we need to make some inquiries and see where we can go on that and just see where it takes us...

...Laughing Matter It took Bill Clinton exactly one week to make his first public joke about the Miami raid...

...He spoke to no one on the phone...

...No," answered Holder...

...The agency acted with extraordinary speed, devoting thousands of man-hours and an extensive show of force to seize a single alien who was not a criminal, was not brought to the U.S...

...America's Most Wanted When it was all over--when photos of rifle-toting armed federal agents seizing Elian had been shown on television and published in the papers-a diverse group of critics that included congressional Republicans and liberal Harvard professors Laurence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz began to question the legality of the INS's tactics...

...After stints as an adviser at Justice Department headquarters in Washington and as an assistant U.S...

...At the same time, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants enter the United States every year...

...It's not a terribly popular point to make in official Washington--what with all the laughing and smooching-but it may someday be one of the lasting lessons of Elian Gonzalez's stranae stay in America...

...He knew the agency did not normally use the kind of SWAT-team tactics that some on the legal team feared...

...In a December 1998 press release headlined "INS Issues New Guidelines for Children's Asylum Claims," the agency announced procedures it said would make it easier for young people to apply for asylum...

...how stupid those Miami Cubans seemed...

...When the Sabbath arrived at sundown on Friday, he still had not communicated with anyone and heard of the early-Saturday raid only when someone mentioned it to him later in the afternoon...

...Now, wait a minute," Clinton continued, his voice taking on a conspiratorial hush...

...First, the INS revoked Lazaro Gonzalez's custody of Elian...

...The occasion was the April a 9 White House Correspondents' Dinner, the last Clinton would attend as president, and the targets of his humor were Cuban Americans who in their anger and frustration briefly flirted with silly conspiracy theories about Elian's reunion with his father...

...The agency had no more right to do so than any parent who has been awarded custody would have a right to break and enter for such a purpose...

...In fact, few INS operations--at least those targeting a single alien--have involved the level of force used in "Operation Reunion...

...The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had delivered a setback to the government by saying the INS was wrong when it refused even to consider asylum applications from Elian himself and from great uncle Lazaro Gonzalez on Elian's behalf...

...New immigrants sometimes wait years to have their citizenship applications processed...

...But Rees and others point out that the Justice Department's actions, while not illegal, were an abuse of the attorney general's power and, at the very least, a parody of standard department practice...

...In March 1999, the INS announced a plan to de-emphasize job site raids and border patrols in.order to target criminal aliens, immigrant-smuggling rings, and document-forging operations...

...According to an INS statement, the new "Interior Enforcement Strategy"--emphasizing the mid-section of the country rather than its borders--was designed to "systematically combat illegal immigration inside the United States by attacking its causes, not merely its symptoms...

...All of which makes the Elian Gonzalez case more than a little out of character for the INS...

...Nine days before "Operation Reunion," the Associated Press, ~'~]li[d][[0]i] [ ~ 0 ] ~ citing government sources, reported that "federal marshals and immigration agents sent to get the boy would likely arrive in minimum numbers, wearing civilian clothes...

...accused ot killing 19 people in Mexico--lining them up against a wall and cutting them down with automatic weapons...

...Or would it exercise restraint and allow the legal process to run its course...

...Yet that is precisely what the INS claimed when it came to Elian Gonzalez...

...And just hours before agents arrived at the Gonzalez house, Cox News Service reported that federal officials would "send plain-clothes immigration officers and federal marshals to the house...

...Last year Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs h-] 11~ 1]~ ~ _ reviewed the performance of 15 federal agencies and ranked the INS dead last, saying the agency [ ~~'1~]~ can't seem to get anything done...

...I'm going with Janet Reno...

...The right to peaceably assemble is enshrined on our Constitution, right up there with voting and the jury...

...As I recall, there were / 2o or 3o FBI agents and one or two INS agents...

...I think they pretty much did," says Grover Joseph Rees...

...In other words, Washington was quite happy with the outcome of the Gonzalez case...

...Nor did the INS assign as many agents to last year's search for Rafael Resendez-Ramirez, the "Railway Killer" wanted for eight murders, whom the agency had once picked up and mistakenly released...

...The government's intransigence on the issue of asylum is particularly perplexing...

...Eig's opinion carried particular weight because he had been, until just last year, an experienced trial attorney for...the INS...

...Reno herself, along with top deputy Eric Holder, was at the dinner, accepting kudos for the raid...

...Justice officials later revealed that they chose to move in on Saturday because they did not want to take action on either Good Friday or Easter Sunday...

...The Gonzalez family had requested that action be deferred because both they and I were observing solemn holidays," says Eig...

...Neither warrant served the purposes of this case," says a former Justice Department official...

...One-on-one enforcement is inefficient," a former INS official explains...

...Three days before the raid, the AP reported a "plan to use U.S...

...But in the days that followed Tribe's pronouncement, Justice Department lawyers released a series of warrants and affidavits revealing their legal premise for raiding the home...

...I don't know whether or not a hearing will be necessary," House Majority Leader Dick Armey said in early May...

...It seems that my hair in that photo is a little longer than it is tonight...

...Craig, the Post said, "won hands down in the most-kissed category, accepting smoochy congratulations from one and all...

...I said, 'I don't think there's going to be a nighttime raid,'" Eig recalls...

...In retrospect, it seems more accurate to say that they chose the holiday-- it was both Easter and Passoverbecause that was a time when the Gonzalez side might be ill-prepared for the raid...

...Don't be surprised if it takes them nowhere...

...I he new procedures will "help pro- I vide the child asylum 1 seeker with a comfortable, secure environment in which to best present his or her claim...

...Then it issued an arrest warrant for the boy, temporarily declaring him an illegal alien and thus subject to pickup...

...No judge or neutral magistrate had issued the type of warrant or other authority needed for the executive branch to break into the home to seize the child," Tribe wrote in a much-quoted New York Times opinion piece...

...Did they have all their ducks in a row when they did this...

...And besides, Justice Department officials had been liberally leaking their intention to VIII~ ~ ~ J ~ avoid any Sort of armed raid...

...I have a feeling we'll see : , . ~ no shortage of lawsuits filed by people who were tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, struck, and otherwise illegally molested during that raid," says Spencer Eig...

...the guidelines talked about the best interest of the child," says Cheryl Little, executive director of the Florida Immigrant Agency Advocacy Center, which has filed a brief with the Eleventh Circuit supporting Elian's right to an asylum hearing...

...Spencer Eig, the Miami attorney who organized the legal group, tried to reassure his fellow lawyers...

...That's more than we used to deport Joe Doherty," remembers Rees, who was general counsel of the INS during the last years of the Bush administration...

...It was plenty of firepower--but just a fraction of what was used in the Gonzalez case...

...Then, on the basis of its own arrest warrant, it asked for and reeeived a search warrant from a federal magistrate to enter the Gonzalez house and seize the child...

...The president even made a little quip about the Justice Department's use of excessive force...

...by a smuggling ring, and wasn't trying to stay by using phony papers...

...They want to create a deterrent effect...

...Even if the courts allow Juan Miguel Gonzalez to take his son back to Cuba--as this goes to press, the Eleventh Circuit has not yet ruled on the asylum issue--the Miami raid will have long-lasting repercussions...

...To Raid Or Not To Raid For weeks before the April 22 raid, there was an ongoing debate inside the Gonzalez legal team...

...Evidence that INS cannot manage its mission is overwhelming," ~ _ 1 the study's authors wrote...

...Paul, Minnesota...

...The guidelines recognize that children under the age of 18 may experience persecution differently from adults and may not present testimony with the same degree of precision as adults," the INS said...

...Doherty, an Irish Republican Army terrorist convicted of murdering a British soldier, was arrested in New York and deported to Belfast in 1992...

...And that morning's Washington Post carried an account of yet another Washington party, this one at the State Department, at which Gregory Craig, the White House-connected lawyer who represented Juan Miguel Gonzalez, was nearly mobbed with well-wishers...