November 22, 1999
Juan Miguel Gonzalez calls Miami relatives, tells them that ex-wife and son have left Cuba for Florida
November 25, 1999
Elian Gonzalez and two others are rescued at sea off the coast of Florida
November 29, 1999
Castro demands return of Elian Gonzalez to Cuba. Juan Miguel Gonzalez files complaint with United Nations for son’s return.
The Cuban foreign ministry has accused the United States of being responsible for the death of the boy's mother and nine others by encouraging illegal immigration from the Communist island with a policy that allows Cubans to stay in the United States once they reach shore.
State Department spokesman James Rubin called the Cuban allegations ``particularly outrageous and unconscionable.''
``Let's bear in mind that these people left Cuba because of the terrible economic, social, political, legal and security conditions that have led hundreds of thousands of Cuban citizens to seek to flee their homeland,'' Rubin said yesterday.
U.S. officials said the courts will ultimately have to decide whether Elian Gonzalez remains in Florida, where he is staying with relatives, or returns to Cuba where his father and the Cuban government are demanding his return.
December 9, 1999
In a reversal of policy, U.S. officials said the Justice Department rather than state courts in Florida will decide the future of Elian Gonzalez, who was rescued Thanksgiving Day after a small boat capsized killing his mother and 10 others.
December 10, 1999
In Miami, lawyers representing the boy, Elian Gonzalez, filed a petition for political asylum in the United States, which could extend his stay with his Miami relatives for at least 60 days. Roger Bernstein, one of the boy's five lawyers, said the Immigration and Naturalization Service has 60 days to respond to the petition and give the boy a hearing.
December 13, 1999
Six Cuban inmates frustrated with years of detention hold three hostages at the St. Martin Parish Correctional Center, a county jail in south-central Louisiana.
December 18, 1999
The St. Martin Parish, Louisiana standoff ended Dec. 18 after U.S. and Cuban officials agreed to send the hostage-takers back to Cuba.
December 20, 1999
Six of seven Cuban inmates involved in a hostage standoff last week in Louisiana were flown back to Cuba yesterday over the protests of state prosecutors, who say the men should have been put on trial for kidnapping.
Clinton administration officials insisted that the unusual accord with the government of Fidel Castro allowing the men to be returned to Cuba after they freed the hostages did not represent an advance in Cuban-American relations. Nor, they said, was there any tie between this agreement and any possible settlement of another immigration case, that of a 6-year-old Cuban boy rescued from the Atlantic Ocean off Florida last month who has become the subject of an international child-custody battle.
All of the Cubans who were repatriated had served their prison sentences and were being indefinitely warehoused in Louisiana by the immigration service because Cuba generally does not take back deportees. Havana agreed to the request to take them back to end the standoff in secret contacts between diplomats. Clinton administration officials said at the time it was not a trade-off for the return of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old shipwreck survivor pulled from off the Florida coast Thanksgiving day.
The six who were returned were last seen shackled in the custody of Cuban officers in Havana. It is unknown what became of them.
January 5, 2000
A boy rescued at sea and brought to the United States must be returned to Cuba to live with his father, the Immigration and Naturalization Service said. ``This little boy, who has been through so much, belongs with his father,'' the INS commissioner, Doris Meissner, said. She said the 6-year-old boy, Elian Gonzalez, must be reunited with his father by January 14.
Meissner said immigration officials made their decision after two extensive interviews in Cuba with the boy's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. She said the father had provided vivid and extensive details of his bond with Elian, including family photographs and medical and school records. She said Attorney General Janet Reno had been notified of the INS decision and backed it. The immigration agency is a branch of the Justice Department.
Lawyers for the boy's relatives asked Attorney General Janet Reno to reverse the decision and also planned to ask a federal judge for a restraining order. They said the INS was violating its own rules by not allowing the boy to apply for political asylum.
Meissner said the immigration office, having recognized the father's right to speak for his son, would not acknowledge any asylum petition that the boy's great-uncle in Miami might seek to file to keep him in the United States.
January 7, 2000
The fight to keep 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez in the United States shifted to Congress when a House committee subpoenaed the boy, potentially thwarting his return to Cuba next Friday.
The subpoena for the boy to testify February 10 before the House Committee on Government Reform and Oversight could take precedence over the Immigration and Naturalization Service's order that he must return next week to his Cuban father.
January 12, 2000
Attorney General Janet Reno said that a Florida court order granting temporary custody of Elian Gonzalez to his great-uncle in Miami ``has no force or effect'' on a federal government decision that the 6-year-old should be returned to his Cuban father. In a letter to attorneys for Lazaro Gonzalez, the great-uncle who is seeking to keep the boy in this country, Reno also said she sees no reason for reversing last week's Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling.
The question of who has legal authority to speak for the child regarding his immigration status in this country ``remains one of federal, not state, law,'' Reno said. If the relatives would like to challenge the INS decision, she said, the Justice Department is prepared to litigate the matter in federal court. In the meantime, she said that an INS deadline of tomorrow for compliance had been extended and that there is no intention to remove the boy forcibly from the Miami home of his great-uncle.
Reno said that neither the attorneys nor Lazaro Gonzalez have any standing to seek asylum for Elian, since the INS has decided that only his father could represent him. The Justice Department, while rejecting state court intervention, is eager to see the matter brought before a federal court, where it is confident of prevailing.
-PJ