Miami Relatives of Elian Say They’ll Defy Federal Order

Rejecting the personal entreaties of Atty. Gen. Janet Reno, the Miami relatives of Elian Gonzalez said late Wednesday that they would defy the government’s demand to turn the boy over to his father.

Federal officials notified the Miami relatives that they must deliver Elian to Opa-locka Airport just north of Miami at 2 p.m. today.

With undisguised bitterness, Lazaro Gonzalez, the great-uncle who has had temporary custody of the 6-year-old Cuban boy since he was rescued at sea 4 1/2 months ago, lashed out at “the capricious way” Reno has treated the child and his efforts to prevent the boy’s repatriation. He all but called for the exile community to help stop the government from reuniting the child with his father.

“They are preparing to attack my house and take away a child who does not want to go,” said Gonzalez, speaking in Spanish outside the Miami Beach home of a Dominican nun who hosted a three-hour meeting between the Miami relatives, Reno and U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner.

“The moment has come for a final decision. And I want the whole world to see that they are training and preparing to attack a home and take away a child of 6 years who does not want to go back to Cuba.”

Reno responded: “I regret that Mr. Gonzalez felt that way. We all are concerned about the little boy.”

She expressed the hope that Gonzalez would comply with the order. “I think it is obvious, and I believe strongly, that Mr. Lazaro Gonzalez and his daughter care very deeply about Elian. Since his arrival in the United States, they have served as loving care-takers. It is now up to them to ensure that Elian’s transition from their care to the care of his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, happens in the best and least traumatic way.”

Although Gonzalez and one of his lawyers, Manny Diaz, said that they are not interested in further discussions with the government, Reno said, “As far as I’m concerned we will continue to talk.”

At Opa-locka, Elian would be handed over to INS officials for a flight to Washington, where his father, who is Lazaro Gonzalez’s nephew, has been waiting for a week to reclaim his son.

Reno reportedly has offered an alternative: Family members and Elian can return to Washington with her today.

Scores of police were being deployed and traffic control barricades were being erected late Wednesday at Opa-locka.

Diaz charged that Reno and other federal officials have failed to understand both the psychological and physical danger facing Elian. “The government’s answer is: ‘We don’t care. He’s going back to his father. We don’t care what harm comes to this child.’ Where is the compassion? Where is the caring that has made this country so great?”

Angry Aftermath

The angry aftermath of what began Wednesday evening as a bold attempt at personal diplomacy by Reno sets the stage for a showdown that could come as early as this morning.

“It is very difficult to know how it will unfold at this point,” said Sister Jeanne O’Laughlin, the Dominican nun. She added that lawyers representing the Miami Gonzalez family would continue discussions with Reno this morning, if necessary.

Also present at the Miami Beach meeting was Marisleysis Gonzalez, Lazaro’s 21-year-old daughter who has acted as a surrogate mother to the boy since he was found floating on an inner tube off Florida.

With patience on all sides wearing thin, Reno--the nation’s top law officer--arrived here Wednesday with one simple message: Obey the law and put an end to the wrenching case that has revived Cold War tensions between the United States and Cuba and stirred exile passions in South Florida.

Reno arrived in Miami minutes before 6 p.m. EDT and was driven to the gated Miami Beach home of Sister O’Laughlin, the president of Barry University and a personal friend of Reno’s for at least 20 years.

Several dozen demonstrators already had assembled. As Reno’s entourage passed by and turned into the driveway of the house, the crowd of Cuban exiles waved flags and anti-Castro signs and shouted their hopes that the boy would not be sent home to Cuba.

Before the meeting, Reno and Meissner shared a buffet supper with the Gonzalezes, O’Laughlin reported, during which Elian “went from lap to lap’ around the table. Later, as the adults talked, she said, Elian watched cartoons and played with toy cars and an Easter bunny given him by O’Laughlin.

Of Reno’s relations with Elian, O’Laughlin said, “he was precious with her.”

Reno was to spend the night in a downtown Miami hotel. The Gonzalezes were invited to spend the night with O’Laughlin but returned instead to their Little Havana home after midnight. They were greeted by a dozen cheering supporters and the glare of television lights.

Juan Miguel Gonzalez arrived in Washington a week ago, expecting to regain custody days ago of the son he has not seen in person since late November, when Elian left the communist island on an ill-fated voyage in which his mother and 10 others drowned. The child has been living at the relatives’ home here ever since.

The father, staying at the Bethesda, Md., home of Cuba’s top diplomat in this country, wants his son back without having to meet with his Miami relatives first.

“It’s time for the Justice Department to instruct Lazaro Gonzalez to follow the law and do the right thing,” said the father’s Washington lawyer, Gregory B. Craig. “Every day of delay, as we have seen, does enormous damage. It is time for Lazaro to do the right thing. This boy needs to be with his father.”

The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, former secretary-general of the National Council of Churches, met again with the father on Wednesday.

“He has made many concessions,” she said. “He has tried to be cooperative. Last night was an enormous disappointment for him. Then things changed. Now he wants the court order to go out.”

GOP House Members React to Refusal

On Capitol Hill, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and other GOP lawmakers responded to Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s refusal to accept their invitation to visit Congress for discussions with the GOP leadership.

In a press conference with two Cuban-born House members from Miami, DeLay said the rebuff showed that, even though Elian’s father is on American soil, he still is under the control of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

“I’m just appalled by all of this,” DeLay told reporters.

“I don’t believe that Juan Miguel Gonzalez really wants to return his son to a hopeless place where there is no freedom.”

He charged that Reno and President Clinton “have now joined Fidel Castro’s effort to drive a small boy back” to communism.

The two Cuban American lawmakers, Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), leveled similar charges, both in English- and in Spanish-language assertions aimed at their constituents in Miami.

Diaz-Balart called on the White House to permit Juan Miguel Gonzalez to visit Congress, where he would be protected by “neutral police--the Capitol Hill police--that are not under control of Bill Clinton and Janet Reno.”

Miami’s political leaders have taken pains in recent days to defuse the possibility of violence, threatened earlier by some rabidly anti-Castro exiles if Elian is sent home. And Reno, a Miami native, seemed determined as she went to Miami to do all she could to avert any deadline confrontation in which federal agents would be ordered in to seize the child.

Reno was state attorney here in 1980 when her office failed to convict police officers accused of the beating death of a black motorist. In the bloody riot that broke out after that acquittal, 17 people were killed and some of Miami’s inner-city neighborhoods were ablaze for three days.

Tensions have cooled here as many of those keeping vigil outside Lazaro Gonzalez’s Little Hanava house have accepted that Elian eventually will be returned to Cuba. Nonetheless, police in the Miami area were preparing.

In Miami, which includes Little Havana, the Police Department has mobilized a 52-officer field force, trained to deal with civil disturbances. But the special force is out of sight of most Miamians--and will remain that way until it is needed.

“They’re in a low-key mode,” said Police Chief Bill O’Brien. “We don’t want to be accused of provoking an incident.”

In Miami Beach, police were much in evidence in front of the house where Reno met with the Miami family, while two police boats patrolled the Intracoastal Waterway at the rear of the property, which is owned by Barry University.

Wednesday’s events began early in a driving rain, when O’Laughlin arrived at Gonzalez’s house at the family’s request. The 70-year-old nun drove off with Lazaro and Elian, stopping at Mercy Hospital in Coconut Grove, where they picked up Marisleysis Gonzalez, who had been hospitalized since Friday for stress and exhaustion.

In fact, the entire family is under pressure. Their modest two-bedroom home remains at the center of a news media circus, boisterous spectators and police.

“I think the stress they are all under--they felt the need for some space,” said O’Laughlin.

Once at the nun’s house, Lazaro Gonzalez was visited throughout the day by several of the many attorneys who have represented the family over the last four months.

Clary reported from Miami and Serrano from Washington. Times staff writers Lisa Getter in Miami and Janet Hook and Art Pine in Washington contributed to this story.