Elián González Brotons (born December 6, 1993) is a Cuban engineer and politician. As a six-year-old child, he was at the center of a high-profile international custody dispute between members of his family that also involved Cuba and the United States.
On November 21, 1999, Elián's mother, her partner, and Elián fled Cuba by boat as part of a group of refugees attempting to reach the United States. The boat sank during the journey, and Elián's mother, along with most of the passengers, drowned. Elián was found floating on an inner tube and rescued by two fishermen, who turned him over to the U.S. Coast Guard. Elián was taken to a hospital and treated for dehydration and minor cuts. In addition to Elián, a young couple survived and reached shore separately.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) granted Elián temporary permission to stay in the U.S. and placed him with his granduncle, Lázaro González, in Miami. His granduncle wanted Elián to remain in the country, while his father, Juan Miguel González, sought his return to Cuba. This led to a high-profile and protracted custody battle involving his father, his Miami relatives, and U.S. and Cuban officials. Elián was returned to his father's custody after an INS raid on his Miami relatives' home on April 22, 2000. They returned to Cuba when the legal dispute concluded on June 28, 2000. González has openly stated that he never had regrets about his return to Cuba.
Elián González grew up in Cuba, earned an engineering degree, and worked as an industrial engineer. In 2023, he was elected to the National Assembly of People's Power, representing Cárdenas, Cuba.
Elián González was born December 6, 1993, to divorced parents. Although his parents divorced in 1991 after six years of marriage, the couple would separate for good in 1996, but both remained close with their son. They split custody of Elián, who spent up to five nights a week with his father or one of his grandmothers and the rest of the time with his mother.
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, and their bodies were never recovered. González floated at sea on an inner tube until he was rescued by two fishermen, who handed him over to the United States Coast Guard. The two other survivors of the journey, a young couple, made it to the Florida coast separately.
According to González's adult cousin Marisleysis, Elián told her 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 Ferrán, one of the three survivors on the boat, said, "Elizabeth protected her son to the end". According to Fernández Ferrán, 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 granduncle, 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.
Custody dispute in the United States
The U.S. legislation system had enacted the Cuban Adjustment Act in 1966, which sought to provide political asylum for Cubans who fled their country in the hopes of a new life. Under the act, Cuban refugees without visas entering the United States were paroled, and after a year could apply for permanent resident status. The US also issued 20,000 lottery visas every year to Cuban emigrants under the wet foot, dry foot policy. Under this policy, those who reached the mainland were granted asylum, while those who were intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard were sent back to Cuba.
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 caregiver 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 González family in Miami 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 said he 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 granduncle, 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 of the boy, and would not lend police assets or any other assistance in taking the boy.
On April 14, a video was released in which Elián González told Juan Miguel that he wanted to stay in the United States. However, many thought that he had been coached, as a male voice was heard off-camera directing the young boy. In a September 2005 interview with 60 Minutes after being sent back to Cuba, González stated that during his stay in the U.S., his family members were "telling me bad things about [my father]", and "were also telling me to tell him that I did not want to go back to Cuba, and I always told them I wanted to."