Send in the Grandmas

Elian's abuelas shuttle between Washington and Miami but still can't take the boy back to Cuba

Before Elian Gonzalez's grandmothers arrived in Miami to see him last week, Cuban Americans confronted the nun at whose home the meeting would take place. They demanded that Jeanne O'Laughlin, a Dominican sister and president of Miami's Barry University, prove there were no trapdoors in her house from which agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service could jump out to seize the boy. Then when the grandmothers landed in Miami, their Cuban handlers kept them on the tarmac for an hour to deliver words of warning. Beware, they told the 51-year-old matriarchs: Miami's Cuban exiles may try to hurt you.

It...

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