Elián González
Cuban boy in 2000 international custody dispute
Elián González Brotons (born December 6, 1993) is a Cuban engineer and politician. As a six-year-old child, he was at the center of a high-profile international custody dispute between members of his family that also involved Cuba and the United States.
On November 21, 1999, Elián's mother, her partner, and Elián fled Cuba by boat as part of a group of refugees attempting to reach the United States. The boat sank during the journey, and Elián's mother, along with most of the passengers, drowned. Elián was found floating on an inner tube and rescued by two fishermen, who turned him over to the U.S. Coast Guard. Elián was taken to a hospital and treated for dehydration and minor cuts. In addition to Elián, a young couple survived and reached shore separately.
The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) granted Elián temporary permission to stay in the U.S. and placed him with his granduncle, Lázaro González, in Miami. His granduncle wanted Elián to remain in the country, while his father, Juan Miguel González, sought his return to Cuba. This led to a high-profile and protracted custody battle involving his father, his Miami relatives, and U.S. and Cuban officials.
“Elián González” enters the record as cuban boy in 2000 international custody dispute. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Elián, González and Cuban can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q551503. VIAF identifies the subject as 63550682. The Library of Congress control number is no00034453. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1993 and 1999.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elián González” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.