Public Bill in Elian Case Tops $1.5 Million, Agencies Say

Elian Gonzalez has cost the Department of Justice more than $578,000 since the boy was rescued at sea on Thanksgiving Day, federal officials said Thursday.

But that cost pales in comparison to the amounts being spent by private groups and individuals with an interest in the boy’s fate and by Miami area law enforcement agencies, which have struggled for months to control demonstrations and protests outside the home of the boy’s Miami relatives.

Those agencies alone have spent more than $1 million, mostly on police overtime, since the boy arrived in Miami, officials estimate.

The Cuban American National Foundation, a wealthy and powerful lobbying group that wants to prevent the 6-year-old from returning to communist Cuba, will not specify how much it has spent so far. But it is paying all costs of the many trips the boy’s Miami relatives, lawyers, psychiatrists and others associated with the case have made to Washington, the group said.

So far, donations to a fund set up by a church group to pay attorney fees for Elian’s father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, have topped $60,000. And at least one group has established a Web site to collect donations over the Internet.

Offices at the prestigious law firm of Gregory B. Craig, Juan Miguel Gonzalez’s attorney, have been swamped with so many donations of clothing, food, toys and bedding for the boy and his family that one secretary there said she felt “like I’m running a Goodwill office.”

The Cuban government is keeping silent about how much it is spending and who is paying travel costs of Elian’s playmates, teachers, and relatives to visit him.

And as the boy’s father, a hotel doorman in their hometown of Cardenas, Cuba, plays with his son on the vast grounds of the Aspen Institute’s Wye River estate in Queenstown, Md., the boy’s great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, formerly an unemployed truck mechanic, is on the payroll of a major car dealer in Miami. He was hired earlier this year by the dealer, a prominent Cuban exile.

“It’s certainly costly, but this situation moves people,” said Thom Whitewolf Faccett, general secretary of United Methodist Church’s advocacy arm. His organization has collected more than $50,000 to help Elian and his father.

“Our goal is $100,000,” Faccett said. “It’s really coming from grass-roots people from throughout the United States.”

As expenses continue to mount, a civil action in the case is moving rapidly through the courts. A federal appeals court Thursday denied Lazaro Gonzalez’s request that he and the boy’s other Miami relatives be allowed to visit Elian and that the court appoint an outside guardian for the boy. The court accepted instead the government’s offer of regular reports to the family from a psychiatrist and a social worker.

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals continued its order barring Elian from any site in this country that has diplomatic immunity. The boy’s Miami relatives had asked for the order to keep Elian out of the custody of Cuban diplomats.

The court has yet to rule on a motion by Juan Miguel Gonzalez to recognize him as Elian’s sole legal representative in the boy’s petition for asylum in the United States.

Meanwhile, Elian’s 10-year-old cousin and a former kindergarten teacher arrived in Washington late Wednesday. By Thursday evening, they had not yet visited the boy at the guest house where Elian and his family are staying.

Four of Elian’s schoolmates from Cuba arrived in Washington early Thursday. The mothers of three of the four also flew on the charter flight from Havana, along with a Cuban pediatrician. The father of the fourth child was to join them later.

Even as Elian’s acquaintances from Cuba were arriving in the nation’s capital, his Miami relatives returned home from Washington late Wednesday, unsuccessful in their attempts to see the boy who had lived with them for five months. Elian was put in the temporary custody of Lazaro Gonzalez after surviving a shipwreck off the coast of Florida. Elian’s mother and 10 others died, but the boy, then 5 years old, was rescued and brought to U.S. shores.

He has been the subject of a bitter custody dispute since. Lazaro Gonzalez, his family and Miami’s fiercely anti-communist Cuban exiles maintain that the boy must not return to Cuba. The U.S. government has said that he belongs with his father, Lazaro Gonzalez’s nephew. And Cuba, by all accounts, is where Juan Miguel Gonzalez wants to live.

Elian “deserves to be with his daddy,” Atty. Gen. Janet Reno told reporters Thursday. “And he deserves to have his life move on.”

The Justice Department may want to move on as well. In addition to consuming much of Reno’s time for weeks and, she acknowledged Thursday, taking her away from other matters, the case has been costly.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service spent $374,000 to house, transport and train the 131 immigration agents and 20 U.S. marshals who participated in the raid and for the U.S. government plane that flew Juan Miguel Gonzalez and his family to Washington.

Since Tuesday the family has been staying at the Queenstown house as guests of Nina Houghton, chairwoman of the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan educational organization based in Aspen, Colo. The family is guarded 24 hours a day by the U.S. Marshals Service, which has spent $161,000 on the case.

Other Department of Justice expenses include $25,000 spent on what officials described as conciliation efforts with Miami’s Cuban community.

As for Lazaro Gonzalez, Cuban American National Foundation spokeswoman Ninoska Perez said that he has refused to accept cash from her organization or the community.

“We don’t have an Elian account,” Perez said. “We have helped this family the way we helped others.”

After Elian’s arrival, Lazaro Gonzalez--who had worked painting boats and doing some car repair work--accepted a job as a body repairman at a Miami Ford dealership owned by Lombardo Perez, a director of the foundation.

Perez told the Miami Herald earlier this month that he continues to pay Lazaro Gonzalez his salary even though Gonzalez has been too busy to come to work for months. “He pays him as a Cuban and a Christian,” said Ninoska Perez (no relation to Lombardo Perez). Lombardo Perez was out of town Thursday and could not be reached for comment.

In court records filed in connection with the custody battle, Lazaro Gonzalez has reported that he earns nearly $31,000 a year.

Throughout much of the last five months, Lazaro’s wife, Angela, has continued to go to work each day at her job in a Hialeah clothing factory. And Marisleysis Gonzalez, Lazaro’s daughter, has a job as a loan processor at a Miami bank, although between caring for Elian, lobbying trips to Washington and hospitalizations for stress, she has not worked much in recent months.

The Elian affair has also proved expensive to the community. Even before the weekend disturbance following the seizure, Miami police had racked up more than $800,000 in extra expenses--chiefly police overtime--and the tab now “is considerably more,” according to spokesman Lt. William Schwartz. He said that he could not offer an exact figure because all the bills are not in.

Other Miami-area law enforcement agencies estimate that they have spent more than $200,000 since the boy’s arrival in Florida.

Meanwhile, Miami Mayor Joe Carollo fired City Manager Donald Warshaw on Thursday, just days after he demanded Warshaw dismiss Police Chief William O’Brien for failing to warn the mayor about the raid to seize Elian. Warshaw, the only official with authority to fire the chief, refused.

“I’m sad for all that’s happening in our city,” Warshaw said.

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Schrader reported from Washington and Clary from Miami.