[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146 (2000), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5655-5656]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                             ELIAN GONZALEZ

  Mr. SMITH of New Hampshire. Mr. President, I want to pick up on a 
couple of points I made last night regarding Elian Gonzalez.
  My colleagues need to understand today this young boy is going to be 
yanked from the arms of his family, literally, at the direction of 
Janet Reno, and placed on an airplane and taken God knows where--we are 
hearing maybe to Bethesda--where he meets with Juan Gonzalez in the 
confines of the Cuban control which is where this Cuban diplomat lives, 
or perhaps ultimately on an airplane and headed for Cuba. There are no 
restrictions. We don't know.
  The speech I made on the floor last night I thought was very 
compelling regarding this situation. There is talk about how this young 
man is going to go back to his father. I will repeat briefly what I 
said last night. He is not going to go back to his father, if we let 
this young boy go back to Cuba. The Cuban diplomats have already said 
this young man is controlled by Cuba. He is a child of the state. He is 
a child of Cuba. He is not a child of Juan Gonzalez--only biologically. 
Beyond that, he is not the son of Juan Gonzalez; he is the son of Cuba.
  We have a 6-year-old little boy who survived a terrible incident at 
sea, watching his mother drown. Her dying words literally were: Please 
get Elian to the shores of America. The two survivors told me that 
themselves because they saw her die, as did Elian.
  Later they were separated and Elian floated for 3 days in an inner 
tube. When he was picked up by two fishermen, he was surrounded by 
dolphins. We know dolphins are a protection because sharks do not 
interfere with dolphins. He was being protected by the dolphins. He had 
no sunburn after 3 days at sea. He told me he saw the Virgin Mary while 
he was floating in this inner tube.
  This is a very special little boy who had never been inside a church 
until he came to America. We now have said, the Justice Department has 
said, Janet Reno has said, this boy has no rights under the law. She is 
wrong. She has discretion under the law to send him back, but there is 
no law that says he must go back. I want to make that very clear.
  I think the Senate should go on record, as tough as it is, and take a 
vote one way or the other, binding or nonbinding, but take a vote. 
Every Senator should let the American people know how they feel about 
this because Elian went through an awful lot--a lot more than most of 
us go through in our lifetimes. His mother died trying to get him to 
America, and we have now taken her rights away. She has no voice 
because she can't speak for herself. Perhaps ultimately in the custody 
court without the Justice Department would be the right way to resolve 
it. However, the Attorney General has chosen to be confrontational, as 
she did at Waco, and said he will be taken. She has made this statement 
over and over in the past several days.
  I read the polls that say 61 percent of the American people say Elian 
Gonzalez should go back to his father. This is not about polling. There 
were no polls out there when Elian was floating around in the ocean in 
rough seas for 3 days.
  I have met Elian Gonzalez and until yesterday I don't think Janet 
Reno had. He is a special boy. He is going to be Castro's main 
objective when he gets back to Cuba. This boy cannot succeed in saying 
good things about America to his classmates. This boy will go into a 
Communist education camp. He will be taken away from his father most of 
the time, probably 11 months out of 12, and he will be ``reeducated.'' 
Fidel Castro himself has said this boy will be reeducated. He will be 
reeducated all right. Ask some of the Vietnamese who came out of 
Vietnam what a reeducation camp is and ask some of the Cuban American 
community today what it is like in Cuba and why thousands have come 
here and thousands more have died trying to get here.
  Now because little Elian's mother drowned, he has no rights. I 
thought this was America. But I guess it isn't anymore.
  I want everybody to understand what happens to Elian Gonzalez. We 
hear about Fidel Castro. You would think he loved this little boy and 
would want to get the little boy back to his father. ``That is all I 
want,'' says Fidel.
  I will close on this point: On July 13, 1994, 72 Cuban men, women, 
and children boarded a tugboat called the 13 de Marzo and they set 
sail, hopefully, they thought, to freedom in the United States. Three 
hours later, 32 of them would be forced back to Cuba and imprisoned and 
another 40--23 children among them--would be killed by the Cuban goon 
squads of Fidel Castro.

[[Page 5656]]

  Do you know how it happened? I will tell you how it happened. We got 
this firsthand from the survivors: Two Government firefighting boats 
pummeled the helpless passengers, who were unarmed, with water from 
high-pressure firehoses 7 miles off the coast of Cuba. The passengers 
repeatedly attempted to surrender to Government officials, going so far 
as to hold their children in their arms up like this, saying: Please, 
these are my children, stop, stop.
  But the Cuban Coast Guard was relentless. The firehoses were 
enormous. Survivors said children were sprayed from the arms of their 
mothers into the ocean waters. Other children were simply swept off the 
deck by the firehoses and drowned in the sea. Desperate to protect 
their children, some of the mothers went down below deck with their 
children. What did they get for that? The Cuban Coast Guard rammed 
their vessel again and again and sank it with these people in the hold.
  Here is a picture of a little girl, Caridad Leyva Tacoronte, 4 years 
old. She was one of those children.
  If Castro's goons could have caught that boat, they would have done 
the same thing to Elian Gonzalez.
  So I don't want to hear any more of this talk about how this is going 
to be the nicest thing for Elian, to go back to his wonderful little 
home in Cuba and live happily ever after with his dad because that is a 
bunch of pure, unadulterated garbage. Let's face reality. If the Senate 
does not have the courage to stand up and vote and be on record against 
that, then what do we stand for? What do we stand for?
  Here is another one, Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz, 3 years old, sprayed from 
the arms of her mother by a high-pressure firehose and drowned in the 
ocean before her mother's eyes.
  Elian did not get caught, so Castro did not kill him. He made it to 
the ocean. The ocean, though, took the lives of his fellow passengers, 
all but two. One other couple and Elian survived. His mother died.
  So rather than send this to a custody court--I am not asking anybody 
to make a decision on where Elian should go. All my resolution does, 
that I have been trying to get a vote on now for a month and a half, is 
it gives permanent residency status to Elian, to his father, to his 
father's current wife, and to his child, to Elian's two grandmothers 
and grandfather--all the family. It lets them come here free of Castro, 
sit down as a family, talk with the Miami relatives, and decide how 
little Elian's fate should be resolved. That is all I am asking.
  But, oh, no, we cannot do that because Janet Reno and Fidel Castro 
have decided the kid has to go back to Cuba. I want everybody in 
America to know what is going to happen. I promise you, this is the 
kind of stuff that happens in Cuba. He is going to go into a little 
reeducation camp, and he is going to learn all about communism, and we 
are going to make mighty sure, in Cuba, that he does not tell his 
classmates about Disney World or anything else nice that happened here 
in America. He is not going to let that happen. So he is a special 
little boy, all right, to Fidel Castro.
  When I hear all this stuff about this nice little happy relationship 
with Juan Gonzalez, his father--where has his father been for 4 months? 
Has anybody stopped him from going to Miami and sitting down with the 
family and talking this out? Yes. Fidel Castro has stopped him.
  Do you know where Mr. Gonzalez' mother is right now? She is under 
house arrest in Cuba so she cannot move freely. Let's get real here. 
That is where she is. He is afraid to say anything because he fears for 
his mother's life. He has his wife and child here but he doesn't have 
his mother here.
  What a tragedy this is, that this little boy, who survived all of 
this, is now going to be forced back and he has nothing to say about 
it. I am never going to forget, as long as I live, no matter what 
happens, that little boy looking me in the eye about 2 months ago, 3 
months ago, and saying: Senor, ayudame, por favor--help me, please. I 
don't want to go back to Cuba.
  I asked him: Elian, don't you want to see your father?
  He said: Si, senor--yes, but I want my father to come here to America 
because that is what my mother wanted.
  Frankly, that is what his father wanted, too, but he can't say it. 
His father knew Elian was coming. He spoke to the hospital the night 
Elian was rescued and he was in the hospital. The father spoke to the 
doctors and to the family and thanked the family and the doctors for 
taking care of him and said, ``I'll see you soon.'' But, oh, no. Then 
comes the Attorney General blundering into this thing: Oh, no, this is 
an immigration matter.
  Do you think he came in here by yacht?
  Once again, I plead with my colleagues, whoever the powers that be 
are around here: Bring this thing to a vote today before 2 o'clock. 
Don't block it. Bring it to the floor and allow us to be recorded so 
the American people will know where we stood on a matter as important 
as this.

                          ____________________