U.S. Court Issues Temporary Ban on Elian’s Removal

A federal appeals court on Thursday issued a temporary order blocking any move by the U.S. to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba while the boy’s Miami relatives and his father remain stalemated over a family meeting that might lead to a breakthrough in their bitter custody fight.

The emergency stay was issued by a judge on the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta in response to a petition from the boy’s Miami relatives and came just one hour after the relatives defied a 2 p.m. deadline set by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno for the boy to be delivered to immigration officials at a nearby airport.

The temporary injunction took the immediate pressure off Reno and the federal government, giving officials some time to figure out how best to transfer custody of Elian to his father as they prepare to argue to the court what they believe should be done for the child.

The missed deadline and the court order highlighted another dizzying day of developments in the emotional battle over the doe-eyed Cuban boy, whose mother and 10 others died last November when their boat capsized during an attempt to sail to South Florida.

Family members released a homemade video in which Elian says he wants to stay in the country, the president discussed the importance of the rule of law, the Vatican offered to intercede. Yet again, surging emotions ran through a crowd visited by some of this city’s leading luminaries.

For now the 6-year-old remained in the Little Havana home of his great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, where he has lived since he was rescued at sea.

And the child’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, remained holed up in Washington, where in the eight days since he arrived from Cuba he has grown increasingly frustrated over the failure of the U.S. to bring him his son as promised. During the afternoon, stepping out the front door of the Cuban Interests Section, a stern-faced Juan Miguel Gonzalez directed an obscene hand gesture toward a handful of demonstrators.

“Today, Lazaro Gonzalez broke the law,” said Gregory B. Craig, an attorney representing the child’s father. “Elian Gonzalez is being held unlawfully in Miami against his father’s wishes.”

Among the several hundred Cuban Americans who surrounded the home where the boy has been living, the mood turned from tense to jubilant. “If no one had been here they would have taken the boy,” Julian Verbeja said. “They didn’t dare come here.”

Reno Describes Family Meeting

The Justice Department was to respond to the stay by 9:30 a.m. today, but officials do not expect a ruling for several days. “We agreed to this with a time frame in mind of three or four days,” said Justice spokeswoman Carole Florman.

Earlier Thursday, Reno held a Miami news conference to offer details of her meeting late Wednesday with Lazaro Gonzalez, his daughter Marisleysis, Elian and several attorneys for the family during which she failed to persuade them to travel to Washington with the child.

“I am trying to work through an extraordinary human tragedy, and the importance in working through it is that we do so without violence, without having to cause further disruption to the little boy,” said Reno before returning to the nation’s capital.

Facing a crisis in her hometown, Reno spoke deliberately and with evident emotion. Asked if Elian had sat on her lap Wednesday in the meeting at the Miami Beach home of a Dominican nun, a longtime friend, Reno replied: “No, he didn’t sit on my lap.

“I would like to see the day, though, where I can meet Elian, wherever he is, and sit down and talk to him, not about the trauma and the tragedy that he’s been through, but about himself and what his interests are. He is obviously a wonderful little boy.”

Elian himself was much in evidence Thursday, playing in the side yard, to the cheers of the crowd, and often seen on television in the videotape released by the Miami relatives to the Univision Spanish-language network and then played on many local stations. On the tape, Elian is sitting cross-legged on a bed and says into the camera, “Papa, I don’t want to go to Cuba.”

Craig called on the news media to stop airing the tape. “He has been exploited enough.”

Jennifer Bailey, a state court judge who, as expected, on Thursday dismissed the Miami relatives’ effort to win a custody hearing, also spoke out. “We are losing sight of him as a child and starting to treat him as a thing. We need to stop.”

President Clinton weighed in too, saying: “I’ve tried to do everything I can to stay out of it. But it is our obligation to uphold the rule of law.”

He added that Juan Miguel Gonzalez has already been found to be “a devoted and fit father and could properly speak for his son, and therefore make decisions for his minor son.”

If the Miami relatives lose at the appellate level, they could then appeal to the Supreme Court. But a Justice Department source said that, in the time between, officials could move quickly to get the child back to his father.

Justice Department officials in Washington said the stay would be in force for at least today but possibly as long as three days. Officials agreed to hold off on any plans to extract the child from the Miami home until the appellate court acts further. But meanwhile, they are moving ahead by shaping final plans to enforce Reno’s order to turn the child over.

‘The Appropriate Way to Move Forward’

“We are moving forward with our law enforcement approach,” said Immigration and Naturalization Service spokeswoman Maria Cardona. “We are looking at several law enforcement approaches. Our experts are looking at the situation and assessing the appropriate way to move forward.”

Florman, the Department of Justice official, added: “If we have to use marshals at some point, we will.”

But, she stressed, “we don’t think that’s of any benefit to the child.”

Reno has made clear that she does not want to use force to seize the child. But Lazaro Gonzalez, while saying, “We are not going to fight with anyone,” also insisted that he will not turn the boy over to his father without first meeting with Juan Miguel Gonzalez.

And in Washington, the Vatican envoy offered to open up their U.S. diplomatic headquarters for any reunion of father and son. For much of Thursday morning the protesters outside Elian Gonzalez’s Miami home thought that “zero hour” was about to arrive, that federal agents were preparing to swoop down on the Little Havana neighborhood and spirit the boy away.

“I need 100 men to cover the back of the house,” one man shouted into a bullhorn. “I need men, not girls! Hombres!”

Minutes later, several dozen people began to form a loose cordon around much of the block, an odd assembly of protesters that included both senior citizens and teenagers.

Hilario Perez, 73, a retired grocer, said he had come from North Bergen, N.J., to attend the demonstrations. “We’ll throw ourselves on our bellies if we have to,” Perez said. “Let them kill us here.”

Spanish-langugage radio stations broadcast appeals for all able-bodied Cuban Americans in Miami to come to the home and prevent federal authorities from taking the boy away. One female caller to Radio Mambi said, in a tremulous voice, “If everyone goes and blocks the streets, there is no army that can take that boy away.”

A Cuban American merchant group called on its members to shut down their businesses for two hours so that their employees could attend the demonstrations.

On a half-block cordoned off from reporters and the public, more than 100 people milled about the small patch of crab grass in front of Lazaro Gonzalez’s home. There were priests in their clerical collars, the mayors of several South Florida cities, doctors in white coats and Cuban American celebrities, such as actor Andy Garcia and singer Gloria Estefan, who are prominent in community affairs here.

Indeed, at zero hour itself--2 p.m.--it was not federal marshals but Estefan who stood before the Gonzalez home. She appealed to Elian’s father to come to Miami, where she promised he would be “protected by the sanctuary offered by the Cuban American community.”

Miami Police Close Off Traffic

Just after 2 p.m., as the protest reached its peak, perhaps 3,000 people milled about the house and the surrounding streets, and Miami police had closed off traffic in a two-block perimeter around the house.

A rumor spread through the crowd: The streets around Elian’s house had been declared “federal territory.” The federal marshals would enter from the back. They would come at night, went another.

Pointedly, at the deadline hour, Marisleysis Gonzalez was handing out paper cups of water to some of those crowded behind police barricades in front of the house. Her father, Lazaro, wearing a T-shirt imprinted with a photo of Elian, was also often outside, sometimes praying with his supporters.

Reno said that if the Gonzalez family “can work things out for themselves, the government would step aside.”

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Clary and Tobar reported from Miami and Serrano from Washington. Times staff writer Lisa Getter and Times researcher Anna M. Virtue contributed to this story.