Who is Elian Gonzalez?
Six-year-old Elian Gonzalez is America’s most famous refugee. He arrived in the US clinging to an inner-tube, after his mother and 10 other Cubans drowned when the boat they fled Cuba in foundered off the coast of Florida last November. Elian’s great uncle, based in Miami, gained temporary custody, but the US government ruled the boy must return to his father in Cuba. Elian has been returned to his father, now in America. The US supreme court has ruled that he cannot be forced to stay in the US – despite a vigorous campaign by his Miami-based relatives to keep him there. What happened in the intervention? When Elian’s father and Miami relatives couldn’t come to an agreement, immigration officials resorted to a dawn raid on the Miami house on 22 April. A photographer in the house snatched the dramatic picture of a clearly terrified Elian being snatched from his great uncle at gunpoint. Elian was reunited with his father, a move he appeared happy about, according to publicity shots and U
