The immigration official who led the raid to yank Elian Gonzalez from the home of his Miami kin said agents felt they had no alternative but to use pepper spray to “fight” off demonstrators.
“When we first arrived in front of the house in our vans … the first thing I saw was individuals giving orders and organizing resistance on the front yard,” said INS Director James Goldman in an interview with the TV program “Inside Edition.”
“People were performing human chains … people were screaming … people were beginning to surge over the demonstrators’ barricade.
“We literally had to fight our way to the front door. We had to deploy [pepper] spray to repel some of the demonstrators,” Goldman said in the interview, which airs today.
Elian was snatched by the Immigration and Naturalization Service during the lightning Easter-weekend raid after a months-long standoff between the government and Miami relatives who are fighting to keep him from going home to Cuba.
Donato Dalrymple, the fisherman who helped rescue the 6-year-old boy from the Atlantic – and who was photographed trying to hide him in a closet while an INS agent pointed a gun at him – sued the government over the raid this week.
Dalrymple claimed he was hit with pepper spray and that his constitutional rights were violated.
Goldman flew with Elian to Washington and watched as he was reunited with his dad, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
“The image of the father embracing his son at the initial reunion, to me, is the image that I remember most from this effort,” he said.
“Clearly, it was as sincere and emotional as one could expect. The father overwhelmed his child, embraced him … they hugged … he cried.
“It was an overwhelmingly emotional reunion. It brought tears to the eyes of anyone that witnessed it.”
Despite a firestorm of protest over tactics used in the raid, Goldman said, “I know we did the right thing, morally, ethically and legally.”