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Anywhere else,
Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen’s child custody rulings would go
largely unnoticed. But here, Cohen must decide a case that
strikes at the heart of Miami’s largest community. With the
future of a 5-year-old Cuban girl resting squarely on her
shoulders, Cohen holds a kind of power that only a Miamian can
understand.
The legal
battle has been dubbed “the Eliana case” for its resemblance to
the Elian Gonzalez custody saga between a Cuban father and exile
relatives. That debacle, which encapsulated the Cuban-American
community’s decades-long struggle of sacrifice and separation,
incited daily protests before ending with horrific images of a
heavily armed SWAT team taking a wide-eyed little boy from a
Little Havana closet and whisking him away under the cover of
darkness.
This new
conflict, involving a wealthy Coral Gables family and a poor
Cuban farmer, has been confined to Cohen’s courtroom.
Here’s a
recap: The child’s mother, who brought the girl and her older
half-brother to the United States in 2005, lost custody of the
children when she later attempted suicide. The Florida
Department of Children and Families placed the kids in foster
care with Joe Cubas, a developer and former sports agent known
for helping Cuban baseball players defect from the island, and
his wife Maria. The Cubases adopted the girl’s half-brother, but
when they attempted to adopt her, the girl’s father, Rafael
Izquierdo, fought for custody. He plans to take her back to
Cuba. Cohen ruled Aug. 27 that, since Izquierdo is a fit parent,
the girl should be returned to her father. However, she stopped
short of giving him immediate custody, and now the court must
determine whether separation from her foster parents will cause
the girl serious emotional harm.
“I thought her
ruling was really fair,” said Aliette Hernandez, an attorney
with Buckner, Shifrin, Rice and Etter, P.A. and an expert on the
case. “It seemed she wanted to let the girl stay with the Cubas
family, but didn’t have the legal precedent.”
Cohen, who has
been on the bench since 1992, was forced to defend herself early
in the case against allegations that she might not be impartial
since she is up for re-election in 2008. “Anyone who thinks I
would make a decision based on an election doesn’t know me,” she
told the Miami Herald in August.
So far, she has towed a very thin line in the
case and has helped to prevent citywide protests. But,
ultimately, her decision could determine whether activists take
to the streets as they did in that other case not so long ago.
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