It’s Elian Who Pays for the Circus

Since Thanksgiving Day, when Elian Gonzalez was found clinging to an inner tube off the Florida coast, U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno has acted prudently and judiciously. Throughout the long legal fight to return the 6-year-old to his father, she has shown restraint.

At every turn, the distant relatives who took in the child have resisted what is clear in the law--that the boy must be returned to his father. Never mind Cuban President Fidel Castro, who is playing the episode for maximum political advantage.

This week Reno set a Thursday deadline for the boy’s relatives to hand him over to immigration officials, who would turn him over to his father, now waiting with Cuban officials outside Washington. The relatives refused to comply with the order and got instead a temporary stay from a federal appeals court, further delaying a process that would have properly restored the boy to his nearest relative.

Justice is deliberate, but this matter has long since begun to stink. U.S. officials are being led around by the nose by a rowdy crowd of Miami-based Cuban exiles who are playing the U.S. court system for a sucker with their continued refusal to comply with a ruling of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Back on Jan. 5, Reno had the authority to send federal marshals to the house of Elian’s relatives and pick up the youngster. The process would have delivered him to the hands of the INS, which has ruled that Elian should be returned to his father.

Reno waited patiently, counting on a peaceful transfer and hoping the relatives would come to reason. But reason has been absent on their part from the start of this ordeal, a grim circus that has increased tensions in Miami’s Little Havana.

Only Reno has played a straight game, and had she started earlier the matter might have been resolved without crisis. The Miami relatives, with the boy as barter, want to wage a war of words with the Castro government. That’s their privilege. But where does it leave justice and legality? Court decisions have been ignored right and left. Interlocutors (the boy’s grandmothers) have been milked for publicity. And by failing to be more forceful, Reno has allowed the fiasco to drag on.

We understand the Cuban Americans’ dislike of Fidel Castro, and we largely share it. But this boils down to a relationship between a father and his son. The legal maneuvering serves no one’s cause and harms this child.