"Before the raid, Miami Police and INS agents would grab two men with felony records from the house next door. They were detained on immigration charges.
...
Willy Lopez, who lives in the house behind the Gonzalez's, said the two men plucked by agents were assigned as lookouts to tip the family to a raid." (April 30, 2000, Miami Herald, Raid's Prelude, What Went Wrong, Missed signals helped doom deal, By staff)
The two arrested were Lazaro Garrido and Jorge Gonzalez.
"...As noncitizens with felony records, they are subject to deportation.
Records showed Garrido has convictions for burglary, theft and strong-arm robbery. Gonzalez has two convictions for carrying concealed firearms and convictions for burglary and theft.
Gonzalez was released by the INS within days. He could not be located. Garrido remained in INS detention at the Monroe County Jail pending a deportation hearing." (Andres Viglucci, May 24 Miami Herald article, "Makeshift Force Disputes INS's Cause for Concern")
If this is not illegal, it should be. If the INS admits that it arrested them simply to remove them, without any probable cause for any offense, then the INS ought to be in big trouble. Usually, the police can get away with this kind of thing because they don't boast about it and the standard of proof for showing that the police arrested someone for a bad reason is so high. Here, it seems they boasted.
If the INS knew that the men were not illegal aliens, then the offense is even worse. It would, moreover, be a civil rights violation, since the government has no right to seize Hispanics on trumped-up immigration charges.
Noncitizens might well be subject to deportation at any time for reasons like past felony records, particularly if they have been paroled by the INS, as Elian was-- I don't know the law, and someone should check it, but one would think the INS knows what it is doing there. Even if there were legitimate grounds for arresting Gonzalez and Garrido, however, this case should still be deeply troubling. The INS has admitted that it would not have arrested them except for their involvement in the Elian situation, and that their involvement in the Elian situation was perfectly legal. Indeed, it took the form of standing around in someone's yard to show support for a political cause. Thus, this is admittedly selective prosecution to suppress political activity.
" 'If they were so innocent, what were they doing there?' said James Goldman, an assistant district director for the INS in Miami who commanded the raid." He said that not just about the two ex-convicts, but about the entire group of people who hung out in the Gills' yard in the week before the raid. (Andres Viglucci, May 24 Miami Herald article, "Makeshift Force Disputes INS's Cause for Concern") Goldman-- not a minor figure in the Elian affair-- does not seem to be a man with high sensitivity for civil liberties.
The INS agents jumped Gills's fence and gassed Lopez and his dog. This despite a statement in Viglucci's article that "Unlike demonstrators at the front of the Gonzalez home who wrestled with agents, the half-dozen people who were in Gills' yard during the raid offered no resistance, the operation's commanders said." I don't know whether this is the kind of behavior that needs a search warrant, but I would hope it is. The story needs investigation to clarify things: Were Lopez and his dog on the Lopez property when they were attacked?
If these two things give rise to civil suits, that means they give rise to civil discovery too. The civil suit would take months or years, but such discovery might turn up all kinds of things about who is responsible for what. In particular, it might turn up whether there really was a search warrant for the Gonzalez break-in.
The earlier story:
"Agents jumped the fence of neighbor Lopez's yard to get to the house.
...
''When they came Saturday, I was making my rounds -- you know, like a guard -- and saw them eastbound on Third Street. I ran to the back yard, screaming to Lazaro or anybody back there: 'They're coming!' Then I got gassed. . . . They gassed my dog. They were prepared. They had wire cutters. They knew exactly where everyone was. They stopped me cold, put a gun to me and said, 'Don't move!' They jumped the fence like they were hitting the beaches." (April 30, 2000, Miami Herald, Raid's Prelude, What Went Wrong, Missed signals helped doom deal, By staff)
"Zumbado and Moeller arrived at the front door at the same time as several INS agents, Wheatley said.
Moeller was ordered away from the house at gunpoint, Wheatley said. He was told to get on the ground and was struck in the head by an agent's gun barrel, causing a cut, he said.
Zumbado had made it in the house and was trying to disconnect cables that tied his camera to Moeller. He was knocked to the floor and knocked off balance again when he tried to get up. While kneeling, he was told not to get up or he would be shot, Wheatley said." (Wednesday April 26 6:17 PM ET,NBC Seeks Elian Coverage Explanation, By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer)
'"We got Maced, we got kicked, we got roughed up," Cuban-born NBC camera man Tony Zumbado told MSNBC. He said that as the incursion began, federal agents kicked him in the stomach and yelled, "Don't move or we'll shoot." Zumbado added on NBC's Dateline: "My sound man got hit with a shotgun butt on the head, dragged outside --he was halfway in --and he was dragged out to the fence and left there and they told him if he moved they'd shoot."
Zumbado explained that federal gunmen also disabled his camera and yanked out its audio cable.
... an ambulance took Zumbado from his home to Miami's Baptist Hospital on April 26 after he fainted from back spasms.'(4/28/00 10:45 a.m.Jackboot Reno Stomps NBC News Crew ...while the media snooze. Deroy Murdock, Senior Fellow, Atlas Economic Research Foundation, National Review website.)
What would the market value of the camera footage have been? I should think that NBC and the cameramen have a strong tort case for many thousands of dollars, quite apart from the medical bills. Since this is an intentional tort, and there is physical damage, pain and suffering might well be added, and punitive damages might be available, depending on whether Florida law is like that of most states.
Some people have mentioned Wilson v. Layne,000 U.S. 98-83 (1999), the "media ride-along" case, in connection with Elian,saying that Janet Reno wanted to have reporters along, but was forbidden by law. (Wilson: http://caselaw.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=98-83.) That is only true in a narrow sense. Reno could not have invited reporters to storm inside the house with the INS agents and photograph the Gonzalez's bedroom furnishings. She could, however, have invited them to witness the events outside the house, to verify whether the INS agent actually knocked, whether the force used was reasonable, and whether the INS agents outside threatened to kill people such as the NBC cameraman. Also, the INS could have had their own, government photographer along. Whether the INS could have immediately released the photographs to the public is questionable, but they could make a strong case for doing so after the Gonzalez's accused the INS agents of illegality, and they could certainly use such photographs in court if the Gonzalez's sued them.
"At 5:07 a.m., federal agents in white mini vans arrive at Lazaro Gonzalez's home in Little Havana. One of the agents sprays the photographer with pepper spray as he takes the picture. (Jon Kral/The Miami Herald)"