Eric Holder dispensed with Elian Gonzalez, not so much our new ‘refugees’

Eric Holder’s storied past is little reported. Less we forget, Human Events gives us this reminder that while a tearful Eric whines about the poor illegal gang bangers who are washing ashore via Mexico, he had a totally different attitude for the infamous Cuban Gonzalez case back in the day. So Eric didn’t need to follow any rule of law dispensing with Elian Gonzalez. Here we go:

And yet it was (then) Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder who concocted the “legal” cover for the INS to mace, kick, stomp, and gun-butt  their way into the home of Elian Gonzalez’s legal custodians (legal U.S. citizens and residents all) on the morning of April 22, 2000, wrench  a bawling 6-year-old child from his family at machine-gun point, and bundle him off to Castro’s terror-sponsoring fiefdom, leaving 102 people (legal U.S. citizens and residents all) injured, some seriously.

Even as the mace dispersed and Elian’s legal custodians sought medical help for their injuries, Fox News’ Andrew Napolitano already had Eric Holder’s number:

“Tell me, Mr. Holder,” Napolitano asked on April 23, 2000, “why did you not get a court order authorizing you to go in and get the boy (Elian Gonzalez)?”

Holder: Because we didn’t need a court order. INS can do this on its own.

Napolitano: You know that a court order would have given you the cloak of respectability to seize the boy?

Holder: We didn’t need an order.

Napolitano: Then why did you ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for such an order if you didn’t need one?

Holder: [Silence]

Napolitano: The fact is, for the first time in history you have taken a child from his residence at gunpoint to enforce your custody position, even though you did not have an order authorizing it. When is the last time a boy, a child, was taken at the point of a gun without an order of a judge? Unprecedented in American history.

Holder: He was not taken at the point of a gun.

Napolitano: We have a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun.

Holder: They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively…

The nature of this “sensitivity” I’ve already mentioned, including the number injured by the mace, gun-butts, and jackboots. Thanks to the ritual MSM-Castroite collusion, most people forget (or missed) the crucial legal and ethical details of the Elian circus/tragedy — which were mostly established during the first week after the boy’s rescue at sea, after his mother’s drowning.

The “son-belongs-with-his-father” crowd, for instance, “missed” (with the help of the MSM-Democratic complex) that Elian’s father was initially delighted that his motherless son was in the U.S. and in the loving arms of his uncles and cousins.

The evidence — frantically buried by the MSM-Democratic complex — was overwhelming. Mauricio Vicent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper El Pais, wrote that during that first week, he’d visited Elian’s hometown of Cardenas and talked with Elian’s father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel had always longed for his son Elian to flee to the United States. Shortly after Elian’s rescue, his father had even applied for a U.S. visa!

The legal-weasels forgot (or missed) that on Dec, 1st, 1999, the INS (ostensibly under the jurisdiction of Janet Reno’s and Eric Holder’s Justice Department) asserted that Miami-based uncle Lazaro was indeed Elian’s legal custodian and Florida’s family court indeed the place to arbitrate further issues.

“They never made it clear just what kind of warrant it was. And neither would it have been legal,” patiently explained Alan Dershowitz (no less!).

More at Human Events , well worth the full read.

Holder: He was not taken at the point of a gun.

Napolitano: We have a photograph showing he was taken at the point of a gun.

Holder: They were armed agents who went in there who acted very sensitively…