Unit 3 Assignment: Minor Asylum Case Brief
PA 401: Advanced Legal Writing

Gonzalez v. Reno, 212 F. 3d 1338 (2000)
Facts:
This is an Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. (No. 00-002606-CV-KMM). K. Michael Moore, Judge. Gonzalez v. Reno, 86 F. Supp. 2d 1167, 2000 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3225 (S.D. Fla., 2000)
Parties to this case include: Elian Gonzalez minor child, Lazaro Gonzalez plaintiff temporary legal custodian, and Attorney General Janet Reno. Six-year-old Cuban national Elian Gonzalez was rescued from the water several miles off Fort Lauderdale Florida. Elian was transferred to a United States Coast Guard vessel so he could be transported to a nearby hospital for treatment. Elian's mother, Elisabeth Brotons, drowned during the voyage from Cuba. The INS temporarily paroled him into the care of Lazaro Gonzalez, his great uncle, in Miami. Plaintiff is the temporary legal custodian, who filed an asylum application on his behalf against the wishes of his father in Cuba. The reason the plaintiff did want to return was, because he claimed that Plaintiff had a well-founded fear of persecution because many members of Plaintiff's family had been persecuted by the Castro government in Cuba. In particular, according to the applications, Plaintiff's stepfather had been imprisoned for several months because of opposition to the Cuban government. Two of Plaintiff's great-uncles also had been imprisoned for their political acts. Plaintiff's mother had also been harassed and intimidated by communist authorities in Cuba. The applications also alleged that, if Plaintiff were returned to Cuba, he would be used as a propaganda tool for the Castro government and would be subjected to involuntary indoctrination in the tenets of communism. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) rejected the application as legally void. Plaintiff minor appealed to the district court, which dismissed the case because plaintiff minor's father was solely authorized to apply for his son's asylum.
Issues:
At issue was whether plaintiff minor applied for asylum within the meaning of the INA when he or a non-parental relative submitted an application for asylum against parental wishes? INA had to make the decision on if the father was being cohered from the government of Cuba?
Rules:
Plaintiffs appealed the dismissal as violation of 8 U.S.C. § 1158 and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause.
Analysis:
The INS investigated the plaintiff accusation that the defendant was being forced into getting his son back to Cuba by the Cuban government. The INS review the 8 U.S.C. § 1158 statute to see if a six year old was able to apply for asylum on his own.
Conclusion:
The law was silent about the validity of such asylum applications, it fell to the INS, as an executive agency, to make a discretionary policy decision. The INS Commissioner rejected Plaintiff's asylum applications as legally void. The Commissioner-concluding that six-year-old children lack the capacity to file personally for asylum against the wishes of their parents-determined that Plaintiff could not file his own asylum applications. The court affirmed the district court's judgment; the policy decision made was reasonable. The INS did not abuse its discretion or act arbitrarily in applying the policy in rejecting plaintiffs' asylum applications.