April 22, 2000 - Elian Gonzalez seized in raid, returned to Cuba
A five-month ordeal over the fate of a six-year-old Cuban boy who lost his mother while the pair fled from Cuba to the United States ended when federal agents stormed a Miami home and returned the boy to his father in Cuba. The Elian Gonzalez case polarized the nation. Many in the South Florida Cuban exile community believed that the boy should be allowed to stay with relatives here because his mother drowned while trying to bring him to the United States in a small boat. They also contended that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro would win a propaganda victory if the boy was sent back to his father in the communist nation. Federal courts ultimately sided with his father, and in the early morning hours of April 22, more than 20 federal agents in white vans arrived at the house of Lazaro Gonzalez, the boy's great-uncle, and used battering rams to get through the home's chain link fence and front door. They searched the house until they found the boy hiding in a closet with one of the two men who had rescued him from the ocean. Members of the Cuban exile community reacted angrily after the raid, setting fires in the streets and struggling with riot police. More than 260 were arrested. Read more by the Associated Press in the Gainesville Sun: Elian seized, given to father