Cuban custody judge halts hearing (Miami's female "Elián Gonzalez")

Source: Miami Herald

Cuban custody judge halts hearing

The judge presiding over a contentious custody dispute over a Cuban migrant child chided the state over its objection to a trial court hearing in the case, which is currently before an appellate court.

Posted on Tue, Nov. 27, 2007

BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER
cmarbin@MiamiHerald.com

After state lawyers objected to a Miami-Dade judge's attempt to hold a hearing on the welfare of a 5-year-old girl at the center of an international custody battle on Monday, the judge blasted the state Department of Children & Families for setting what she called ``a dangerous, dangerous precedent.''

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen had scheduled a judicial review hearing Monday morning to gauge the welfare of the girl, who is splitting time between her birth father, a Cuban national, and a Coral Gables foster family that is seeking to raise her.

Such hearings -- which are intended to ensure that children in state custody are well cared for and are receiving all the services necessary to promote good health, stability and education -- are required under both state and federal law, which ties the completion of the hearings to federal funding.

But attorneys for DCF; for the foster parents, Joe and Maria Cubas; and for the girl's birth father, Rafael Izquierdo, objected to Cohen's holding the hearing. They argued that Cohen has no jurisdiction over the case because a state appeals court late last month stayed trial court proceedings.





Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/321937.html

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http://www.local10.com.nyud.net:8090/2007/0906/14058577_240X180.jpg

http://graphics8.nytimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/2007/09/02/us/cuban600.jpg

The parents, Rafael Izquierdo

Elena Pérez



To refresh your memory, the story from earlier articles:

8 Years After Elián, a Cuban Custody Battle

By TERRY AGUAYO
Published: September 2, 2007

MIAMI, Sept. 1 — Almost eight years after the custody battle over Elián González took center stage here, a similar situation involving another Cuban child is playing out in a local courtroom.

The dispute this time involves a 4-year-old girl who came to the United States from Cuba in 2005 with her mother and her 13-year-old half-brother. At issue is whether the girl’s father, a Cuban farmer who arrived in Miami in June with his wife and 7-year-old daughter to fight for his younger daughter’s custody, is fit to raise her.

The father, Rafael Izquierdo, allowed the girl’s mother to take her to the United States, but several months after her arrival, the mother attempted suicide and the state Department of Children and Families took custody of the two children.

The children, who have different fathers, were placed in foster care, and since April 2006 the girl has been in the care of Joe Cubas, a wealthy real estate developer and former sports agent, and his wife. The boy, whose father had surrendered parental rights, was formally adopted by the Cubases, who also want to adopt the girl. Mr. Cubas, who is well known in the Cuban-American community here for helping star baseball players defect to the United States in the 1990s, has the support of the Department of Children and Families in his effort.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/us/02adopt.html

http://www.diariolasamericas.com.nyud.net:8090/uploaded_pictures/37203_1.jpg

Florida sports agent,Joe Cubas, and wife

Seriously? I think the statistics say "no".

How about those African nations with their "children soldier" programs ?

Don't know if a militant professional exile like Joe Cubas is interested in getting his adopted kid (kids, hopefully for him, if he manages to finagle an adoption of the young girl too) into a program like this, but in Miami they are open, up and running, preparing kids to shed blood por la causa.

Alpha Males

Hustling down a dirt road surrounded by miles of farmland, Leslie Fernandez struggles to keep a rifle balanced on her shoulder. Dressed in bell-bottom jeans and a white T-shirt, she catches up with her fellow commandos -- five men dressed in military fatigues and also toting weapons.

"What kind of gun is this?" she asks Jesus Hoyos, who is leading the team.
"That's an M-1," Hoyos explains curtly. He's cradling a semiautomatic Bushmaster AR-15.

The group stops and huddles. "This is the rally point," Hoyos tells them. He reviews the plan: Leslie will remain behind to guard the backpacks under cover of darkness while the men sneak into a Cuban military base and shoot at two MiGs parked in a large grassy field. "Let's go," Hoyos says quietly.

Leslie watches the men creep down the edge of the road -- two in front, three behind -- then disappear through an open metal gate surrounding a small military camp. Moments later machine guns pop. They pop again, faster. "Retreat! Retreat!" Hoyos shouts. The commandos pull back, turning and firing as they go. They scurry down the road and regroup, breathless, at the rally point, where Leslie has been patiently waiting. "Okay, enemy troops have the beach blocked," Hoyos pants. "Contingency plan A -- the helicopter -- was shot down. So we have to walk five miles to a point where they're going to pick us up at 0600."

But there are no enemy soldiers, no MiGs in the field. Only stacks of old tires. The bullets are blanks. It is not night, but Sunday morning. And Leslie is no companera; she's an eleven-year-old who has never been to Cuba and scarcely speaks Spanish.

-

from the safety and shelter of boats sitting in the water at night?

Smooth operators, for sure, those Alpha 66 people.



Early "exiles"

-

As you know, Jorge Mas Canosa was the head of the powerful Cuban exile foundation - the CANF.


-

~snip~
And then there is the Iraqi girl, hands soaked in her dead father's blood, whose little brother does not yet understand that his childhood just came to an end. Fearing for their lives, US soldiers killed the parents in the front seat of the family car. Demons will likely haunt their nights. Stuff happens. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, bless their souls, will sleep well tonight.

Wars never fail to produce their share of pithy lines. Tommy Franks made sure this one would be no exception. "We don't do body counts," crowed the general, who really meant to say that he does not do "dark-skinned body counts" (he counts the others just fine). Lucky for us that he doesn't run a Swedish newspaper, or it would have splashed the headline: "Tsunami kills 2,000 Swedes—and a few locals." To be fair, Franks remembered the last time he did body counts, Vietnam, and how well that ended. But today's tactical thinking packs a wallop of self-righteous denial. We don't tally the children we kill for the same reason monsters don't buy mirrors: That's how they go through life thinking they're angels.

We've snuffed out innocent lives in numbers that insurgents and terrorists could only dream of. But we avert our eyes. We bury our heads in the sand and turn a blind eye to our moral cowardice, thus pulling off the amazing feat of being ostriches and chickens all at once. We owe this marvel of ornithology to the inexorable fragility of human illusions. To quote James Carroll, "we avert our eyes because the war is a moral abyss. If we dare to look, as Nietzsche said, the abyss stares back." George Bush, the philosopher, has updated Berkeley's riddle: Do Iraqi children scream when the bombs fall if there is no one in the White House to hear them?
(snip/)http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~chazelle/politics/jan05.html

We really SUCK here. If this were happening in the reverse, we would be threatening to send in the fucking MARINES.

We have no morality left at all, do we?

The State of Florida and the Cuban exile sports agent father are going to try to keep at it until they finally win one for the rabid right-wing Cuban "exile" community, regardless of any right and wrong whatsoever. All they care about is that they win.

A-holes!

The agent was drummed out of sports after Cuban players he seduced to leave their country and come here to play reported that he tried to rip them off financially, really reaming them in the process, yet he's a BIG HERO in Miami because he stuck it to Cuba, they think, by stealing their base-ball players.

He was mentioned in this review of a baseball book I found in a search:

Shadowy agent Joe Cubas, the fat man in the Panama hat who has helped engineer most of the recent Cuban defections, gets the same treatment: a quick and clean debunking that does not intrude on a necessary description.

"Cubas exaggerates the intrigue surrounding many of the defections, lowers the age of the players, and often inflates their capabilities," Jamail writes, before quickly proving his allegations, then moving on.
(snip)

http://www.mattwelch.com/Sportsjones/FullCount.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
What may well be happening here also is that Florida officials, perhaps including Governor Crist, seek the loyalty and votes of the large Cuban-American community, and (correctly) see defeating Rafael Izquierdo and keeping his five-year-old girl in the US against his will as a way to win votes.

In addition, the five-year-old girl's foster father, Joe Cubas, is a well-connected, wealthy Cuban-American. He worked as a sports agent for Cuban-American baseball players and is very influential in the Cuban community. (According to the Miami Herald, Cubas' license as an agent was suspended by the Major League Baseball Players Association after several of his clients asserted that he had financially exploited them. One player claimed that Cubas confiscated his immigration documents and refused to return them. Apparently, Cubas now works in real estate in Miami.)
(snip)

http://www.glennsacks.com/enewsletters/enews_10_23_07.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
Alay Soler, a fellow cuban is here without a passport, his former agent, Joe Cubas was suspended by the players association for confiscating his passport.

According to three baseball sources who independently confirmed the information on condition their names not be used, shortly after Cubas negotiated a three-year, $2.8 million contract for the 25-year-old right-hander last summer, he confiscated Soler's immigration documents and refused to return them until the player paid money the agent said was owed him. Soler disputed the claim, saying Cubas was asking for 15 percent commission -- more than three times the normal rate, and contacted the union, which sided with Soler.
(snip)

http://dominicanplayers.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_archive.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

~snip~
Cuban girl's foster father created market for defecting baseball players

BY ANDRES VIGLUCCI

aviglucci@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

26 August 2007

The Miami Herald

In 1993, at the World University Games in Buffalo, N.Y., a portly small-time
sports agent from Miami named Joe Cubas tailed the Cuban national baseball
team's bus, flashing mysterious hand signals to the players.

For the next two years, Cubas -- debts mounting, his marriage falling apart
-- stalked the star-studded Cuban team around the world, from Tokyo to
Millington, Tenn., sometimes in his family's Ford minivan.

In the cloak-and-dagger style that would become his trademark, Cubas and his
envoys set up middle-of-the-night meetings in motel rooms and dark parking
lots where they plied the reluctant Cubans with food, cash and beer -- all
in the improbable hope that visions of riches and glory in America's big
leagues would tempt the talented but impoverished stars to defect.

For the longest time, no one did.

Until they started to sneak out of team hotels, sprint across ballpark
parking lots into waiting cars to elude Cuban security, cross borders and --
in one famous case -- wash ashore in the Bahamas on a rickety boat.

Cubas almost single-handedly created the market in Cuban sports defectors,
exploiting a loophole in Major League Baseball's rules by having his clients
establish residency in third countries and offering their services to the
team who bid the highest. Cubas became rich from commissions on his clients'
multimillion-dollar professional contracts.

COLORFUL CHARACTER

He wasn't the only agent to go after the Cubans. But Cubas was the most
colorful. Aggressive, given to bluster and embellishment, with a penchant
for publicity, Cubas -- the Miami-born child of Cuban exiles -- delighted in
striking back at Cuban leader Fidel Castro in one place it really hurt --
his vaunted amateur sports machine. Cubas became a folk hero to many exiles.


Along the way, however, Cubas was beset by allegations from players and
former partners that he ripped them off and coldly abandoned defectors whose
professional prospects didn't pan out. The claims have been publicly aired
for years. Cubas has denied them. Some of the most damaging allegations,
including claims that Cubas solicited kickbacks from teams, appear in a 2001
book, The Duke of Havana , that quotes numerous former associates of the
agents extensively and by name. Several contend that Cubas hired smugglers
to get star Rolando Arrojo's family out of Cuba because the player would not
otherwise agree to defect. The book says Cubas described the alleged scheme
in a proposal for an unpublished memoir and boasted of it to friends.

Authors Steve Fainaru and Ray Sanchez say Cubas' career as an agent was
characterized by ''double dealing and fiscal sleight of hand'' and ``blind
greed.''
(snip/...)

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:Iyh0oIOScS0J:archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/cubanews/2007w35/msg00037.htm+%22Joe+Cubas%22+suspended+baseball+players+documents+beer&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us

This scumbag is not related to the child, and is PROVEN to be a shady dealer.

Didn't they decide this MONTHS ago? Florida is really getting a rep as the new home of crazy.

:rofl: :rofl:

Doesn't that qualify him for a seat on the county commission, city commission, Miami mayor, state representative? C'mon.. this case is in Miami.



-

How did Miami get this rep as the "Chicago of the New Millenia"? All that heat would make me want to sleep all the time. Who'd have the energy to be a crook?

where the child would be more "well cared for and <would receive> all the services necessary to promote good health, stability and education" than Cuba.





Hi, Kids! :hi:


I don't visit often. My new life in Arizona is so full I don't need to waste so much time trying to speak truth to the ignorant, bigoted right-wing 'tards' on DU anymore. I spend too much time doing the same here in my new adopted (sadly ignorant Democrat) town...

Don't forget to laugh, dance and sing!!!

http://www.angelfire.com/nj3/RonMBaseman/songbk.htm
Little Red Songbook -- free for now.

Good to see ya. Glad things are working out for you.

:hi: :hi:


-

<snip>

"A 5-year-old girl at the center of an international custody dispute will remain in the ''sole custody'' of her Cuban father, who would stay in the U.S., under a negotiated settlement that ends a bitter, protracted courtroom drama.

Meanwhile, the girl's Coral Gables foster family will be allowed regular visits with the girl on alternating weekends, sources close to the negotiations told The Miami Herald.

After months of on again-off again settlement talks, lawyers for the Department of Children & Families and foster parents Joe and Maria Cubas on one side and birth father Rafael Izquierdo, on the other, agreed today to settle their conflict outside of court.

The battle has been in legal limbo since DCF appealed a finding Sept. 26 by Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen that Izquierdo is a fit parent.

The settlement, sources have told The Miami Herald, allows Izquierdo -- who raises pigs and malanga in Central Cuba -- to retain sole custody over the girl and places no significant restrictions on his parental rights over the child.

The Cubases -- a Coral Gables couple who have cared for the girl for much of the last two years, and adopted her older brother -- will be allowed regular visits on alternating weekends, at least until May of 2010, sources say.

In May 2010, Izquierdo would be permitted to leave the United States and return to Cuba with his daughter, sources say. If Izquierdo chooses to remain in the U.S. longer, or to seek permanent residency, the Cubases would be allowed to continue their weekend visits until Aug. 31, 2012."

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking_news/story/324213.html

The captions:

#1. ROBERTO KOLTUN/EL NUEVO HERALD

Rafael Izquierdo, center, hugs his six-year-old daughter Rachel, left, and his current wife Yanara, right, in Miami.

#2. ROBERTO KOLTUN/EL NUEVO HERALD

Six-year-old Rachel hugs her father Rafael Izquierdo, who spent nearly two years fighting for her five-year-old half-sister.

#3. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Attorney Magda Montiel Davis, right, talks with Rafael Izquierdo in Miami, Aug. 23.

#4. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Attorney Magda Montiel Davis talks to Elena Perez, the mother of the five-year-old girl in the middle of a custody battle, Aug. 23.

(Al Diaz is the photographer who stayed in the house with Elián Gonzalez's drunken granduncle Lázaro and family until the INS came to pick up the kid, once the drunken granduncle announced he was not going to comply with court orders and surrender him to authorities, and Al Diaz snapped the photo they have used all this time, of the agent, his gun, Donaldo Donato or whatever, and the child.)

#5. AL DIAZ/MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Sports agent Joe Cubas, of Coral Gables, is fighting for the custody of a four-year-old Cuban girl steps out of a Miami courtroom, Aug. 23.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Would you look at these sweet faces?

Thank you, so much, for breaking this one to us. I had thought it would just keep dragging on, and on, and on..... and eventually the wealthy Miami "exile" would pull it out and win.

Great news.

Please, post this story freestanding. It's tremendous.

The kid surely looks like her father, doesn't she?

are foster parents given "visitation" rights until 2012? Talk about "confusing" the child! Weren't they all scared that she would be scarred for life for having two sets of parents? Now they don't have a problem with that arrangement?

I'm sickened that this poor man, Mr. Izquierdo, feels he has to settle the case in this way.

Pay the pound of flesh to the nasty Cubasessss in exchange for eventual completely custody and travel rights for his child.

If I were Mr. Izquierdo, I'd continue fighting. If they're trying to settle, it's because they fear losing (as they should).

If I were the father, I wouldn't give an inch. No fat, sonabitch gusano would get my child!

ON edit:

After checking my EMOTIONAL reaction, this deal is a good one. It will mean he'll have to grin and bear it for at least 2 years, every two weekends, but at least he gets to set the rules for conduct in such visits (and they will occur in HIS house, under HIS supervision), and then gets to control everything else about his child's upbringing. Not the 100% best solution, but at least it's guaranteed custody.

Emotionally, it bothers me that he even has to have relations with that gusano moron. I would get the kid and flip the bird to that ass. Then I'd bar my child from having contact with that man, at least until they were 18, and I'd strictly enforce that.

costs. Both parents were reduced to helpless sobbing on the witness stand.

It must be murder trying to get justice in a country where you don't speak the language, and you are very poor, and unpolished.

You're absolutely right. It's a damned shame their doors are going to have to remain open to this pig couple until 2012, like getting the old "Deliverance" raping every two weeks, but at least they get to bring the little girl back to the only REAL living relative she has. Had this drama not taken place in Miami, involving a prominent "exile" this case would have sailed through and she would have been back home long ago.

will surely get his due...in this life or the next.

The Creator does not look kindly on men who torment the lives of other men and their families...and especially for some kind of political "rush", regarding "sticking it" to Castro.

Doesn't even say where the child was born.

and the boyfriend took off almost as soon as the airplane landed, leaving the mother alone to fend for herself and her children, while he went and stayed with his relatives in Miami.

The mother struggled for some time, trying to keep it all together, started getting more and more depressed, and finally called the police, told them she couldn't take care of her little girl and boy, and cut her wrists.

Authorities got to her in time to put her in the hospital, and the state took over the care of the two children.

All of this information was covered in the many stories published by the Miami Herald and the Sun-Sentinel in the last year, so that's why they didn't include it in this story, I'm sure.