Elián González custody battle

In 2000, the custody and immigration status of a young Cuban boy, Elián González (born December 6, 1993), was at the center of a heated controversy involving the governments of Cuba and the United States, González's father, Juan Miguel González Quintana, González's other relatives in Miami, Florida, and in Cuba, and Miami's Cuban American community.

Elizabeth Brotons Rodríguez drowned in November 1999 while attempting to leave Cuba with her son and her boyfriend to get to the United States. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) initially placed González with maternal relatives in Miami, who sought to keep him in the United States against his father's demands that González be returned to Cuba. A federal district court's ruling that only González's father, and not his extended relatives, could petition for asylum on the boy's behalf was upheld by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. After the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, federal agents took González from his relatives and returned him to Cuba in June 2000.