Let a Family Court Rule
"An act of Congress which deprives a citizen of the United States of his liberty or property, merely because he came himself or brought his property into a particular territory of the United States, and who had committed no offense against the laws, could hardly be dignified with the name of due process of law." - Chief Justice Roger B. Taney in Scott v. Sandford, 1857, the infamous Dredd Scott case.
" 'He [Elian] is a possession of the Cuban government,' said Luis Fernandez, a spokesman for Cuba's unofficial embassy in Washington. Once the transfer takes place, he said, 'No other entity can remove this.'" - Reported by Tom Carter of the Washington Times, April 5, 2000.
Imagine a dark moonless spring night on the Ohio River in 1858. A young female slave is risking her life and the life of her six-year old son to escape slavery. Clutching on to a log she struggles to paddle herself and her son across the river to Ohio and freedom. Exhausted by the cool water, she looses her grip and is swept away to her death. Miraculously, her son, who is still clasping onto the log, finally washes ashore on the northern bank of the Ohio River. The youngster's good fortune continues when he is found by a Quaker Abolitionist couple who warm him, feed him, and welcome him into their home.
Fortune runs out for the boy when the situation comes to the attention of authorities. The youngster's southern "owner" claims the boy as property to be returned in accordance with law. Besides that, the boy's father is still resident on the slave owner's plantation. Repatriation of the young boy would reunite the family. With his owner at his side, the father pleads for the boy to come back. The Quaker couple have no legal leg to stand on. They are not relatives. The plantation owner claims that the couple have no real concern for the boy but are exploiting him for the Abolitionist cause. The boy is sent back and we all congratulate ourselves on how well we complied with the law, confident that justice was done and parental rights upheld.
Add a few names and change some of the details and without loss of generality this fictitious story is analogous to the story of young Elian Gonzalez. The young boy, his mother, and twelve others boarded a 17-foot rickety boat and made a desperate attempt to float away from the island prison of Cuba for freedom in the United States. Elian survived the trip. His mother did not.
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