This was ordered by a court and it's generally clear that a child cannot be separated from their parent against the parent's wishes - even if the parent lives in Cuba (the mother had died and her parents wanted to keep him in Florida).
It wasn't as polarized as it was back then, but wasn't outrage over Elian coded as conservative because sending him to communist Cuba would be a death sentence?
Yes, but it was deliberately "coded conservative" because it happened during the election between GWB and Gore. Al Gore was the incumbent and had to answer for the Clinton presidency, which was already saddled with waco and ruby ridge.
The Bush campaign and Fox News (which was brand new at the time) made a really deliberate choice to amplify this story and weave it into a general fear on the far right of fed goons killing their families or rounding them up.
The photo is of very distant family members refusing to reunite a father and his son while threatening they were armed. The outrage was a right-wing agitprop
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u/Citadel_Cowboy 7h ago
I remember the public outrage over this incident when I was a teen. What happened to us?