Reply #130: Cuban child custody cases piling up

[Mika]

Cuban child custody cases piling up
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/story/245277.html
At a courthouse near you: yet another dust-up between Florida
child-welfare officials and a Cuban father seeking custody of his daughter.

By CAROL MARBIN MILLER
With her father's consent, a small child emigrates from Cuba to Miami with her mother. Some time later, the little girl's mom is gripped by mental illness and ends up in a psychiatric hospital.
The girl, now 5, is in the care of state child-welfare administrators. Her father, still in Cuba, wants her back.

Sound familiar?

Just as the battle for custody of Rafael Izquierdo's 5-year-old daughter enters what could be its final chapter in Miami, a strikingly similar case is attracting attention.

The new case is one of at least three involving children born in Cuba currently being handled by the Florida Department of Children & Families, which already has spent more than $250,000 in an effort to prevent Izquierdo from getting custody of his daughter.

How state child-welfare administrators are handling the cases has sparked some testy exchanges in the Izquierdo case.

On Wednesday, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen accused the agency of allowing the nasty politics of Miami-Cuba relations to taint their handling of the custody dispute over which she is presiding.

And last week, one of Izquierdo's lawyers tried unsuccessfully to bring up in court the other cases involving Cuba.

Izquierdo, a farmer from the Central Cuba town of Cabaiguán, came to Miami in May in hopes of regaining custody of the little girl. The DCF wants her to remain with foster parents Joe and Maria Cubas.

The other Miami case began in late August. The 5-year-old girl's mother was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, according to DCF spokeswoman Erin Geraghty.

The girl's father lives in Havana and is seeking to regain custody. DCF investigators believe, however, that he has a drinking problem.

The department has not yet discussed the girl's plight with the dad, Geraghty said.

''We are in the initial process of contacting the father,'' she said.

The parents lived together in Havana, but separated when the girl was two, Geraghty said. The case has been assigned to Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Valerie Manno Schurr.

The girl is currently in the care of her mother's cousins. It is unclear whether they are seeking permanent custody.

Reached by telephone in Cuba, the father declined to comment on the case, saying he did not want his routine custody case to turn into a ``show used for political purposes.''

In the Izquierdo case last week, the judge held a closed-door discussion of the three Florida child-welfare cases involving Cuban children. Present were lawyers for Izquierdo, DCF, and the Guardian-ad-Litem Program in Miami.

Judge Cohen subsequently threatened to hold Steven Weinger, one of Izquierdo's lawyers, in contempt of court and jail him if he brought up those cases in an open court full of reporters.

Earlier that day, Weinger had sent an e-mail to DCF's chief of staff, Jason Dimitris, seeking details of the three cases. But the lawyer's request was shut down.

Following the closed-door discussion in her chambers, Cohen told reporters there was ''another case'' involving a Cuban child, and that Weinger had sent an e-mail with ``elements of truth, but also mistruths.''

Interesting that the Miami Herald can immediately contact the father in Havana in one of the cases discussed here, but the Fla DCF has yet to do so.