page_title: Elián González
section_title: Early life, journey to U.S. and custody battle
hierarchical_section_title: Elián González / Early life, journey to U.S. and custody battle
caption_attribution_description: English: Elian Gonzalez's journey from Cuba to Fort Lauderdale.
context_page_description: Elián González Brotons is a Cuban citizen who became embroiled in a heated international custody and immigration controversy in 2000 involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, his father Juan Miguel González Quintana, his other relatives in Cuba and in Miami, and Miami's Cuban community.
  González's mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez drowned in November 1999 while attempting to leave Cuba with González and her boyfriend to get to the United States. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service initially placed him with paternal relatives in Miami who sought to keep him in the United States against his father's demands that he be returned to Cuba.
  The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling from the Southern District Court of Florida that only González's father could petition for asylum on the boy's behalf, and not his extended relatives. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, and Attorney General Janet Reno sent federal agents who took González from the paternal relatives and returned him to his father in Cuba in June 2000.
context_section_description: Elián González was born December 6, 1993, to divorced parents. On November 21, 1999, González, his mother Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez, and twelve others left Cuba on a small aluminum boat with a faulty engine; González's mother and ten others died in the crossing. González and the other two survivors floated at sea until they were rescued by two fishermen, who handed them over to the U.S. Coast Guard.
  González's cousin Marisleysis said that the boat's motor broke down and they tried in vain to bail out the water with nylon bags, but a storm doomed their efforts. He told her he tried to help get the water out and his mother's boyfriend placed him in an inner tube for safety. "He said afterwards that he fell asleep and that when he woke up he never saw his mother again". He said, "I think she drowned too because she didn't know how to swim".
  Nivaldo Fernández Ferran, one of the three survivors on the boat, said "Elizabeth protected her son to the end". According to Ferran, they set out on their trip at 4 am, dragging inflated rubber floats, or inner tubes, in case they needed them. As they encountered bad weather, the boat's engine failed and the craft began to fill with water. After it went under, the passengers clung to the inner tubes in cold water, with waves reaching heights of three to four meters (10 to 13 feet).
  Afterwards, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) released González to his paternal great-uncle, Lázaro. According to the Washington Post, González's father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, had telephoned Lázaro from Cuba on November 22, 1999, to advise that González and his mother had left Cuba without Juan Miguel's knowledge, and to watch for their arrival.
  Lázaro González, backed by local Cuban Americans, took the position that the boy should remain in the United States and not be returned to his father. Marisleysis González (Lázaro's adult daughter) became Elián González's caretaker and spokesperson for the paternal relatives. Also, Armando Gutierrez, a local Cuban-American businessman, became a spokesman. At the same time, Juan Miguel, with the support of Cuban authorities, demanded that his son be returned to Cuba.
  On January 21, 2000, Elián González's grandmothers, Mariela Quintana and Raquel Rodríguez, flew from Havana to the United States to seek their grandson's return to Cuba. While they were able to meet with the boy only once at the Miami Beach home of Barry University president Sister Jeanne O'Laughlin, they journeyed to Washington and met with congressmen and Attorney General Janet Reno. After nine days of media coverage (during which Republican lawmakers acknowledged they did not have the votes to pass a bill to give González U.S. citizenship), they returned to Cuba to "a hero's welcome".
  On January 28, the Spanish foreign minister Abel Matutes called for the boy's return to Cuba, stating that international law dictated the return. Meanwhile, the Miami Gonzálezes denied allegations that they had offered Juan Miguel a house and a car if he abandoned the action and joined his son in Miami. Juan Miguel was uninterested in emigrating.
  Through January and February, Juan Miguel sent a number of open letters to the U.S. government—published in, among other places, the Cuban newspaper Granma—demanding the return of his son and refusing the Miami relatives' demands.
  Chicago-based fathers' rights attorney Jeffery M. Leving spearheaded the amicus brief, which set the foundation of the custody case to reunite González with his father in Cuba. Manuel González, Elián Gonzalez's great uncle, later retained Leving to reunite González with his father.
  On March 21, Judge Kevin Michael Moore of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida dismissed the relatives' petition for asylum which they had filed on behalf of Elián González. Lázaro vowed to appeal. On March 29, Miami-Dade County mayor Alex Penelas was joined by 22 other civic leaders in a speech in downtown Miami. Penelas indicated that the municipality would not cooperate with Federal authorities on any repatriation o
caption: The journey from Cárdenas, Cuba to Florida
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