The showdown over Elian Gonzalez takes a dramatic turn today — with the tug-of-war tot’s father expected to arrive in the United States, vowing to stay until he’s reunited with his son.
Juan Miguel Gonzalez, his wife and infant son were scheduled to land at Washington’s Dulles Airport at 7 a.m. to kickstart the process of getting custody of the 6-year-old raft boy.
“It is time for this reunion to go forward,” said his American lawyer, Gregory Craig. “He is coming here and is prepared to stay here until he has achieved this objective.”
The bombshell announcement came after Craig spent hours huddled with his client at Cuban President Fidel Castro’s villa in Havana — trying to convince him to come to the United States.
The lawyer said the father was persuaded by a Monday statement from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, pledging to get things rolling once he sets foot on American soil.
“We take this statement from the INS to be an assurance that when Juan Miguel comes to the United States [today], the process for transferring to him the care and custody of his son, Elian, will immediately begin,” Craig said.
Elian’s Miami uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, currently has temporary custody of the boy — who survived a November raft wreck that killed his mother as they fled Cuba.
Faltering talks between the Miami relatives and the feds on handing over the boy resume today.
The INS called the father’s trip a “welcome development” and said its goal remains a “smooth and orderly” transfer.
The agency could officially inform the uncle as early as tomorrow that custody is being transferred to the father, then follow up with a time and place for them to turn over the child.
Castro, who planned to see the father off at the airport, said the reunion was “inevitable.”
“The battle of Elian has been won — in judicial terms, in legal terms, in political terms,” Castro said.
The father is expected to stay in Washington at the home of Fernando Remirez, head of the Cuban Interests Section — which the Miami relatives oppose.
“If he goes to the Cuban Interests Section, we don’t think he’s a free man because he’s still under the control of the Cuban government,” said family spokesman Armando Gutierrez. “The family will ask him to come to Miami and meet in this house and try to work it out.”
Outside the Miami home, protesters expressed fears that if Elian is taken to Washington, he will be spirited away to Cuba before an appeal in the case is heard May 11.
Some demonstrators — who broke down barricades and formed a human chain around the house on Tuesday — threatened physically to prevent the government from seizing the boy.
Asked yesterday if force might be used, INS general counsel Bo Cooper said: “The attorney general has been clear that if we can’t bring about the reunion … in a voluntary and cooperative way, that she’s prepared to enforce the law.”
When news of his father’s trip broke, Elian was not at home; he’d left at 5:20 p.m. to visit a cousin.
When the family returned at 11:35 p.m., with a woman holding a bundle wrapped in a blanket, reporters peppered their spokesman with questions about the boy’s whereabouts.
“It’s not a doll,” Gutierrez responded. “He’s there. Elian is in the house.”