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Miami mayor: City will not help
officials remove Gonzalez from U.S.
MIAMI (AP) — Hours before a cru
cial meeting between immigration offi
cials and Elian Gonzalez’s relatives, the
mayor said Wednesday the city would
not offer any help to federal officials re
moving the child from his home.
Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex
Penelas said he and the mayors of 22
nearby towns would hold Attorney Gen
eral Janet Reno and President Clinton di
rectly responsible for any violence that
might occur if immigration officials re
voked permission for the boy to stay in
this country.
The Immigration and Naturalization
Service has insisted that Elian’s Miami
relatives agree at a meeting late Wednes
day to hand the boy over if they lose
(heir court case. The agency also has
said it would not do anything that would
traumatize the boy.
“We will not lend our respective re
sources, whether they be in the form of
police officers or any other resources, to
assist the federal government in any
way, shape or form to inappropriately
repatriate Elian Gonzalez to Cuba,” said
Penelas, who is of Cuban descent.
“If their continued provocation, in the
.form of unjustified threats to revoke the
boy’s parole, leads to civil unrest and vio
lence, we are holding the federal govern
ment responsible, and specifically Janet
Reno and the president of the United
States, for anything that may occur in this
community.”
Before this afternoon’s showdown at
INS headquarters here, Elian’s paternal
great-uncle
Lazaro Gonza
lez met with his
attorneys.
As he has
said previously,
the uncle said
Tuesday he
would be will
ing to release
the 6-year-old
boy to his father,
Juan Miguel
Gonzalez, if the
father came
from Cuba to pick him up. But Lazaro
Gonzalez said he would not deliver the
boy to the INS.
‘‘The boy lives in my house and
they’ll have to go find him there,” he told
Spanish-language network Telemundo.
Federal officials have said they
would revoke the boy’s temporary per
mission to stay in the United States at 9
a.m. Thursday if Lazaro Gonzalez didn’t
sign the pledge to hand him over. The
INS would then direct the relatives to re
linquish custody, according to govern
ment officials, speaking on condition of
anonymity. They would not say exactly
what timetable
Lazaro Gonza
lez would be
given.
About 50
demonstrators
gathered today
outside the Lit
tle Havana
home where
Elian has been
staying since
he was rescued
in November
from the ocean after his boat sank dur
ing a voyage from Cuba.
His mother, who was divorced from
his father, was among 11 people killed.
ABC aired footage today of the boy
saying he didn’t want to be sent to Cuba.
Elian said in Spanish he didn’t want
his father to visit him in Miami “because
he’ll take me to Cuba and I don’t want
to go to Cuba,” according to the English
narration by ABC’s Diane Sawyer on
“Good Morning America.”
“He can stay here, I don’t want to
go,” Sawyer quoted him as saying.
She said the boy also gave conflict
ing responses to some questions, saying
there was nothing he liked about Cuba
or Miami.
Reading from a statement after
Lazaro Gonzalez balked at the signing
the agreement Tuesday, INS spokesper
son Karen Kraushaar said the Justice
Department hoped the boy’s great-uncle
signed it soon.
“While INS has always had the au
thority to implement its decision, we
have gone to great lengths to bring
about a resolution that is carried out in
a manner that creates as little disruption
for Elian as possible,” Kraushaar said.
The U.S. relatives have asked a fed
eral appeals court in Atlanta to overturn
a federal judge’s ruling affirming an INS
decision to return Elian to his father in
Cuba. The court scheduled arguments
for the week of May 8, which could
complicate any steps by the government
in the meantime.
“The boy lives in my
house and they'll
have to go find him
there”
— Lazaro Gonzalez
Elian's paternal great-uncle
irts child
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Page 9
Mobile-home fire kills 8
including 5 children
AC WORTH, Ga. (AP) — Fire de
stroyed a mobile home early Wednes
day and killed eight people, including
an infant, authorities said.
Firefighters found eight bodies in
the four-bedroom, doublewide trailer
after getting the fire under control, Cobb
County Fire Department spokesperson
Mark Gresham said.
The victims were Linda Joanne
Cochran, her four children, her niece, her
teen-age son’s girlfriend and the girl
friend’s baby, said Ed Converse, who
owns the mobile home park.
He said she worked for him as mainte
nance supervisor until two weeks ago,
when she quit to manage a fast-food restau
rant.
‘Everybody liked Joanne. She was
close to her kids. If there was a stray, she
took them in — anyone, anything. She
had a huge heart,” he said.
The names of the other victims were
not immediately available.
Police said the fire at the Modern
Living Mobile Home Park in Acworth,
about 30 miles northwest of Atlanta, was
reported at 3:16 a.m.
TENN. N.C.
*© Atlanta
Acworth
Fatal mobile
home fire
ALA.
GEORGIA
100 miles
100 km
FLA.
Atlantic
Ocean
AP
Gresham said the trailer was com
pletely engulfed in flames when crews
arrived but it took “just a matter of min
utes” to get the fire under control.
The cause was not immediately de
termined, he said.
Neighbor Tina Knickerbocker said
she and her husband slept through the
commotion.
“Things around here burn up quick
without anybody realizing what’s going
on,” Knickerbocker said.
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