Sadly, Elian's well-being seems to have little effect on the poisonous political rhetoric coming from Miami and Washington. Some conservatives see this case as a long-sought opportunity to stick a finger in the eye of Fidel Castro. Let me say unequivocally that I am second to none in my dislike for Mr. Castro's totalitarian regime. But let's be reasonable. EliAn is a little boy who has lost his mother and desperately needs his father. This is a family issue, first and foremost. To forget that and allow our hatred for the Cuban regime to keep us from doing what is best for the child is shameful. It's already a tragedy that the child lost his mother; it would be a travesty for our government to come between him and his father. I came to Washington with the deep-seated belief that the family is sovereign. You can't be for family values and at the same time advocate that governments be allowed to come between a father and his child. What a tragic mistake it would be for society to allow the state or federal government to determine what's best for our children! But that's exactly what's happening in this tug-of-war over Elian Gonzalez.

Haitian asylum seekers have been subjected to a nationality-based detention policy and deprived of meaningful assessments of the need for their continued detention by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice; and

what a perfect parody of a leftist's reply: any anti-Castro comment is an explicit longing for the days of Batista!

Last December, President Bush signed an Executive Order declaring a new policy that all immigrants arriving in the U.S. illegally by ship would be detained pending final decisions on their asylum claims. All except Cubans, who under a law passed in 1966, are allowed to remain in the community, with relatives or sponsors. The Executive Order allows the INS to continue to detain the Haitians even after an immigration judge has ordered them released on bail. The Government says it detains Haitians as a deterrent to others in Haitai trying to make the journey to the U.S. Critics attack the discriminatory treatment, asking why Haitians must remain in jail while Cubans are allowed to remain at liberty. The Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center has been providing legal services to the Haitians and others for the past six years. The Government gives them four booths at the Miami Krohn Detention Center in which to meet with clients. Recently the Government took the booths away from the Group, leaving the immigrants with no legal counsel. We agree with the [Catholic Bishops letter] that the detention of Haitians is "unfair and morally reprehensible." The Bishops charged in a press statement that "the federal government, through the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, has failed to articulate a compelling moral or security-based rationale for the continued detention of those who seek only freedom for themselves and their children from political persecution and human rights violations in Haiti."