[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 339-340]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             ELIAN GONZALEZ

  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, on the case of Elian 
Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy who is now in Miami, I support Senator 
Mack's private relief bill to give Elian Gonzalez U.S. citizenship. 
This is something I believe should be done. It is not necessarily going 
to stop him from being sent back to Cuba, but it is the right thing to 
do.
  I met Elian Gonzalez personally and the great uncle in Little Havana 
in Miami on January 8. I took the time to go meet Elian. I wanted to 
talk with him myself. I wanted to look him in the eye and find out how 
he felt about the ordeal he went through. Unfortunately, the Attorney 
General didn't take the time to do that. Elian wasn't important enough 
for the Attorney General or any of the Attorney General's 
representatives to meet with him.
  On January 6, Attorney General Reno said:

       If there is any information that we are not privy to--I 
     never say I won't reverse myself. I try to be as open minded 
     as I can. But based on all the information we have to date, I 
     see no basis for reversing it.

  ``It'' being the decision to send Elian back to Cuba.
  On January 8, after meeting with Elian Gonzalez, I wrote Attorney 
General Reno to request a meeting to discuss new information I obtained 
regarding Elian Gonzalez.
  In that meeting on January 8, at the request of the Gonzalez family, 
I sat with Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great-uncle, in a relaxed, 
informal, nonstressful setting. I spent 2 hours speaking with Elian and 
members of his family there at the home. Based on those discussions, I 
have concluded that there are four areas that are critical to this case 
I would like to briefly share with my colleagues before this vote.
  One, and most important, Elian does not want to go back to Cuba. He 
does not want to go back to Cuba. You might say he is 6 years old and 
he doesn't know what he wants. If his mother had lived, we would not be 
talking about this case. He would have his right to be here. She died. 
She can't speak for him. But he spoke. He made it very clear to me. On 
several occasions, I looked Elian right in the eye and asked him 
directly, ``Do you want to go back to Cuba?'' He repeatedly and 
emotionally said, ``No, no, no.'' In Spanish, he said, ``Ayudame, por 
favor,'' meaning: Help me, please; I don't want to go back to Cuba.
  The second point is very important. Ms. Reno was not interested in 
hearing it because she never responded to my request. She totally 
ignored a U.S. Senator's request for a phone conversation, even though 
I know for a fact she didn't have the information I had to share with 
her. Elian's father was aware of his son's planned departure from Cuba. 
Listen carefully to what I am saying. Elian's father is being held in 
Cuba today against his will. They are not reporting that frequently, 
but he is. He was aware of his son's departure. Elian's paternal 
grandfather, who lives in the same household with Elian's father, 
notified relatives in America that Elian and his mother departed Cuba 
and to be on the lookout for them.
  Third, there is reason to believe that Elian's father intended to 
defect at a later date with his current wife and child. I was told by 
Elian's great-uncle that two cousins of Elian's father, now in America, 
were told directly by Elian's father 5 or 6 months ago that he intended 
to leave Cuba with his new wife and child.
  Fourth, there is reason to believe that intimidation tactics are 
being used by the Castro government on Elian's father, Juan Gonzalez. 
Reports from family members say Juan has been removed from his home and 
is not speaking of his own free will and may even be under psychiatric 
care.
  Let me just say that this is a close-knit family. I am not a family 
member or a personal friend of the family, but I took the time to sit 
down and talk with them. I didn't talk with the grandmothers. But the 
grandmothers, Juan Gonzalez, the uncle, and family members are a 
family. People say, ``Why are you politicians getting into this?'' 
Because the mistake was made by this administration by not insisting 
that the family come here from Cuba and sit down and talk about this as 
a family. They can't do it because Fidel Castro won't let Juan Gonzalez 
out. They won't let him out. Even the appointed nun, the go-between, 
arbitrator, the impartial person who was sent to set up the meeting 
between the grandmothers and Elian--she is a friend of Janet Reno's--
she said the same thing: They are under pressure and Elian should not 
go back.
  So the integrity of American immigration policy rests on due process 
and fairness. I was shocked to learn that INS Commissioner Doris 
Meissner never requested a meeting with Elian and never heard his 
voice.
  Now, maybe some of you sitting out there who are going to vote on 
this and maybe some of my friends out in America across the land can be 
callous enough to say you don't care what that little boy thinks, he is 
6 years old, what does he know. Let me tell you what he knows and what 
he has experienced. He sat in an inner tube. You know what that is; it 
is a small tube that is big enough to fit inside of a tire of an 
automobile. That is an inner tube. He floated around in that inner tube 
for 2 and a half days in the open sea--sometimes 30-foot seas--and 
bounced around out there, and he survived. He was picked up by a 
fisherman. He lived, but he watched his mother die. The last words his 
mother said to the two other survivors were, ``Get Elian to America.'' 
That is what he went through.
  As an adult, how would you like to go through that--to sit on a tube 
in 30- or 40-foot seas for 2 and a half days, floating from the north 
of Cuba to Fort Lauderdale, FL, and go through that when your mother 
tried to get you here for freedom, and you would send him back without 
so much as even giving him the opportunity to talk. If we do that, then 
what has this country come to?
  The fisherman who picked him up out of the water gave an emotional 
comment about it. He said, ``I am an American. I was born here. I 
plucked this kid out of the ocean. If you send him back, you are doing 
the wrong thing and I don't know what happened to my country.'' The 
equivalent would be, during the Cold War a mother with a child in her 
arms races to the Berlin Wall, shots are fired, and she tosses her 
child over the Berlin Wall to freedom. Would we send him back? 
Apparently so, under this administration.
  This isn't about father and son separation; this is about bringing 
the father and the grandparents and the rest of them here to America 
where they can decide without the pressure of Fidel Castro. Let's find 
out what they can say and do without Fidel Castro there. Had Elian's 
mother lived, right now Elian would be enjoying due process under the 
Cuban Adjustment Act. Elian Gonzalez, my colleagues, is being punished 
because his mother died. I don't want to punish Elian Gonzalez for his 
mother's death. I can't believe any of my colleagues would want to do 
it either.
  This case is about one thing: the best interest of a little boy who 
sought freedom from Communist Cuba with his family. Sending Elian back 
to Cuba without due process and allowing Castro to exploit this brave, 
courageous kid who drifted helplessly at sea for 2 days on an inner 
tube in a desperate

[[Page 340]]

search for survival and freedom would not only be an outrage, it would 
be the grossest miscarriage of justice I can think of in my lifetime. 
Yet we have people in this very body who say we should do just that.
  I met with the other two survivors, a young married couple. When the 
boat sank, Nivaldo Fernandez and Arriane Horta were with Elizabet when 
she was on the boat that made the trip to the Florida coast. She told 
them, ``Please make sure that my son makes America. Save my son. Please 
see that he gets to the United States.'' Nivaldo showed me his leg, 
which was scarred because he was bitten by fish while floating off the 
coast of Florida. You can still see the effect this had on him, and he 
is an adult.
  Yet this little boy who was so brave--can you imagine, after enduring 
all of that, when people would come to his house --when I came, and I 
am a pretty big guy, he wanted to know: ``Hombre malo'' or ``hombre 
bueno''? Good man or bad man. He wanted to know whether I was a good 
guy who was going to be nice to him or bad guy coming to take him away.
  Can you imagine this poor little boy sitting in that home, when 
somebody comes to the door, thinking the INS is going to take him out 
of his home in the dark of night and take him back to Cuba? That is 
what he is living through now after enduring 2 and a half days in the 
open sea. This is a child, and he doesn't have any rights? Baloney. 
Yes, he does have rights. We should be protecting them.
  As I said, I met another brave individual, Donato Dalrymple, the 
fisherman. He was very touched. He asked me personally to help Elian 
because he told him the same thing: ``I don't want to go back to 
Cuba.''
  Based on this new information that Elian's father was planning to 
come, and some other information, I asked the Attorney General to meet 
with me or take a phone call. She refused either. Not only did she 
refuse to do that, she put on an artificial deadline that caused the 
family more consternation and the Cuban American community more concern 
by having this arbitrary deadline that says: OK, on January 14 you go 
back. Then they rolled that back. That is fine. It is very nice to say, 
OK, we have a deadline; but how would you like to be little Elian, 
knowing that and wondering what happens on midnight of January 14? 
Where is the concern for this brave little kid?
  I support this private relief bill which grants Elian immediate U.S. 
citizenship, and I further support allowing the courts to make this 
decision with the family, without the pressure of Fidel Castro, and I 
hope the Senate will support me on that.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Smith of Oregon). The Senator from Kansas 
is recognized.
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business for up to 10 minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Mr. Brownback pertaining to the introduction of S. 
2021 are located in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced 
Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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