MIAMI, April 22 (UPI) -- Thursday marked 10 years since U.S. agents forcibly took 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez from relatives in Miami to reunite him with his father in Cuba.
Not much is known about the life Gonzalez, now 16, lives, though recent photos show him wearing a military school uniform while attending a Young Communist Union gathering, Miami's WFOR-TV reported.
A cousin, Marisleysis Gonzalez, 32, recently told WFOR she was sad to see him wearing the Cuban military garb but not surprised.
"He's not in a free country. He has to do whatever he's told," she said.
The Palm Beach Post reported the part of the house in Miami's Little Havana where Gonzalez, whose mother had died at sea trying to reach the United States from Cuba, was living until U.S. Border Patrol agents barged in at gunpoint has been turned into a museum.
In 2000 the custody case of the little Cuban refugee was a national drama, with Fidel Castro's Communist Cuba on the father's side and Miami's Cuban exile community on the relatives' side. Ultimately, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno decided to send in the Border Patrol agents to take the boy, and after months of legal wrangling he was sent to Cardenas, Cuba, to be with his father.
Some say the incident sealed George W. Bush's presidential victory in 2000. But former President Bill Clinton said he doesn't second-guess the decision to repatriate Elian even though he had hoped for a different outcome, WFOR said.
"I did everything I could to try to have this resolved in a peaceful way," Clinton told the Miami station. "Believe me, I hated what happened because I thought we would be able to do it in a different way."
