By Alfonso Chardy
achardy@herald.com

In the days before the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service decided to return Elián González to his father, senior INS officials discussed granting asylum to the boy if they could show that the Cuban government had coerced the father into demanding the child's return, according to an internal INS memo shown to The Herald Tuesday.

The Dec. 29, 1999, memo, cited on the first day of a federal employee grievance proceeding in Miami, also noted that some INS officials believed Elián's father -- Juan Miguel González -- at one time sought an immigrant visa to the United States and that his calls to his relatives in Little Havana might have been monitored by the Cuban government. It's the first time this memo has surfaced since the Elián saga began on Thanksgiving Day 1999.

Hand-scrawled notes at the bottom of the two-page memo said then-INS Commissioner Doris Meissner ordered the destruction of the memo one day after it was written when she learned of its existence. According to the notes, Meissner ordered that no more discussions related to Elián be committed to writing. The notes were signed by Rebeca Sánchez-Roig, an INS attorney at the time and author of the memo.

Somehow a copy of the memo, in the form of an e-mail, survived and on Tuesday was turned over to the U. S. Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent, quasi-judicial agency that serves as an arbitration panel for federal employee grievances against their agencies.

The commission began proceedings Tuesday on claims by INS agent Rick Ramírez who said that the agency is retaliating against him for claiming that INS officials harbored anti-Cuban feelings. Ramírez claimed that atmosphere contributed to ''excessive force'' in the April 2000 raid in which Elián was taken from the Little Havana home of his U.S. relatives and reunited with his father.

Ramírez is seeking a transfer to another INS district, as well as a finding by the board that the agency retaliated against him. A federal judge in Miami dismissed Ramírez's lawsuit against INS last month. Ramírez said he would appeal.

Elián, who was 6 at the time, arrived in the United States on Thanksgiving Day 1999 on a makeshift boat, the sole survivor of a risky voyage that killed his mother. Her death set the stage for an international custody battle.

Meissner could not be reached for comment. But on Jan. 5, 2000, seven days after the Sánchez-Roig memo was written, Meissner announced her decision to return Elián to his father, concluding that the father was sincere in his wish to have his son back.

Rodney Germain, an INS spokesman in Miami, said his agency will withhold comment pending completion of the proceedings.

Richard Vitaris, the judge presiding over the proceedings at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Miami, refused to admit the memo into evidence on the ground it was not ''relevant'' to Ramírez's allegations because it was written prior to the raid.

But Ramírez's attorney, Larry Klayman of the conservative legal watchdog group Judicial Watch, said the memo showed that some INS officials thought Elián deserved asylum since Cuba might have pressured his father.

The memo was turned over to the board by Diana Alvarez, an INS attorney who testified on Ramírez's behalf.

The memo by Sánchez-Roig, whom Alvarez identified as a fellow INS employee, summarized a conference call on the Elián case involving several senior INS employees including Meissner.

The paragraph on whether Elián's father sought a visa to the United States suggested that he had applied for the visa in an annual lottery for Cuban nationals in Havana. U.S. officials have maintained they could not find any record of Juan González's request.

The memo said: "It appears that the father had made an application (potentially the lottery) to depart Cuba.''

On whether Elián deserved asylum, the memo said if coercion of Elián's father could be shown INS could "potentially accept the child's asylum's application and advise that there is no prohibition on age to child filing application. As such PA should proceed.''

PA appears to have been a reference to political asylum.