By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 28, 2000; Page A03
Members of Elian Gonzalez's extended family crisscrossed Capitol Hill
yesterday, presenting divergent views of what the 6-year-old boy wants
and needs and at times nearly running into each other as they walked from
congressional office to office.
At 5 p.m., grandmothers Raquel Rodriguez and Mariela Gonzalez--who
want him home in Cuba--were with Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) in
Room 410 of the Cannon House Office Building. During their meeting with
Elian in Miami on Wednesday, they said in a brief interview with a
reporter, "he seemed like a different boy. He was sad and shy. At first,
he
didn't talk."
Moments later, one floor below in Cannon 312, great-uncle Lazaro
Gonzalez--who wants to keep him in Miami--pronounced Elian "happy, as
always," as he and a group of other Elian relatives and supporters entered
a meeting with Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.). "We're just up here
looking for support, and making sure all the laws are obeyed," he said.
Even as political wheels were turning, the legal side of the case was
proceeding, albeit not as quickly as the Justice Department would have
liked. In Miami yesterday, a federal judge set a six-week timetable for
considering a lawsuit filed Jan. 19 by Lazaro Gonzalez--postponing a legal
decision on Elian's fate until March at the earliest.
The great-uncle, who has refused to obey an Immigration and
Naturalization Service ruling that Elian be reunited with his Cuban father,
alleged that Attorney General Janet Reno and INS Commissioner Doris
M. Meissner violated Elian's constitutional rights in refusing to consider
a
petition for political asylum filed on his behalf.
The Justice Department had asked U.S. District Judge William M.
Hoeveler to expedite the case over the next two weeks. In its 85-page
brief filed last night, along with hundreds of pages of supporting
documents, Justice asked Hoeveler to summarily dismiss the case on
grounds that INS had followed all pertinent laws and regulations and
collected all necessary information in reaching its Jan. 5 ruling. Citing
dozens of federal precedents, Justice maintained there were no grounds
for
overturning the INS decision, and that even if there were, Lazaro Gonzalez
had no standing on which to challenge it.
Included in the Justice filing was a State Department statement saying
that
failure to respect international law, as well as INS regulations, concerning
the reuniting of parents and children could set a dangerous precedent for
children of U.S. parents being held overseas.
Hoeveler yesterday set a hearing for March 6--the same day a Florida
family court that has awarded the great-uncle temporary custody of Elian
has set for a custody hearing.
On the political side, opposition appeared to be growing to two
Republican bills that would grant Elian instant U.S. citizenship and remove
him from INS jurisdiction. If the number of members willing to meet with
each side was any indication of congressional sentiment, the grandmothers
yesterday won hands down.
They have requested a meeting with President Clinton and said they have
not received a response. After the women met last weekend with Reno,
the White House said her office was the proper place to address their
concerns.
The Miami family, accompanied by the two other Cubans who with Elian
were the only survivors of the shipwreck in which his mother and nine
others died Thanksgiving week, met with a half-dozen members who
already had declared their support.
Starting early this morning, the grandmothers spoke to dozens of members
in crowded meetings that participants said usually ended in tears as
Gonzalez and Rodriguez recounted their closeness to Elian, his relationship
with his father and their alternating happiness and anger during their
Wednesday reunion with him.
Contrary to their understanding of the rules for the meeting, the women
said, officials from the militant anti-Castro Cuban American National
Foundation were with the Miami relatives. Assured they would not come
into contact with family members, the grandmothers said they were
astounded when Elian was brought to them hand in hand with Lazaro
Gonzalez's daughter, Marisleysis.
The meeting was at the home of Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, president of a
local Catholic college. The grandmothers complained that a visit they
thought would be uninterrupted was disturbed four times--once when a
Miami police officer removed a cellular telephone on which Elian was
talking to his father.
The Cuban Communist Party newspaper Wednesday printed a letter it
said was from the father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, telling the grandmothers
to
bring a telephone so he could talk to Elian. Acceding to the wishes of
the
Miami relatives that no cellular telephones be allowed, INS officials said
they told the grandmothers not to bring one, but conceded afterward the
instruction might not have been understood. "Nobody told us that,"
Rodriguez said yesterday.
The grandmothers said they showed Elian photographs of his family and
friends in Cuba and things his schoolmates had sent for him, and he began
to loosen up. "He hugged us very, very tightly and kissed us many times,"
Rodriguez said.
His paternal grandmother, Gonzalez, said "We told him we were going
through the formalities to bring him home. He didn't answer, but he smiled
and I looked into his eyes and I knew" that he was happy, she said.
Meanwhile, O'Laughlin said in an interview with the Associated Press
yesterday that before the reunion at her house she thought "the child should
be with the father." But what she "saw and felt" during the meeting "really
frightened me for the child." She blamed both sides but, without
elaboration, cited the Cuban government for trying to manipulate the
situation.
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