BY 9 A.M. today, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is supposed to take custody of Elian Gonzalez, unless his Miami relatives agree to relinquish him if they lose their federal appeal.

But don't hold your breath. If you think this will happen, you're deluding yourself as much as the Clinton administration has deluded us for all these months.

Since Elian's rescue in December, I thought the administration was trying to follow the law and do the right thing. But it's now clear that this is a charade. Elian Gonzalez has been kidnaped and the Clinton administration is as complicit in this crime as the fanatical Miami Cubans who will do anything to tweak Fidel Castro.

This last ultimatum came after the INS let a Monday deadline pass without taking Elian from his relatives. For that matter, the INS could have sent Elian home to Cuba last week after a federal judge said Attorney General Janet Reno had the final say-so in the matter.

The boy could have spent last weekend with his father and grandmothers. But the administration has let every opportunity to send him home pass. Flash back to December. U.S. immigration officials met with Elian's father in Cuba and found that this was a father who loved his son, wanted him back and could provide a good home. The INS ruled that the father alone could speak for his son and set a Jan. 14 deadline to comply with his request that Elian be returned to Cuba.

Then the INS did nothing, while the boy's Miami relatives filed for custody in a Florida court. Reno said the case had to be decided by the federal courts, thereby inviting Elian's relatives to file a federal lawsuit. They did.

By then, almost two months had passed since Elian was found off the Florida coast, and the Cuban-Americans in Miami had whipped themselves into a frenzy of determination that he remain in this country.

The INS had another perfect opportunity to send Elian home when his grandmothers came to visit at the end of January. But church officials who arranged the visit said Reno told them flat out that the grandmothers wouldn't be allowed to take him home. The federal courts would have to settle it, Reno said.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Michael Moore rejected a request by Elian's great uncle to grant the boy asylum, saying the decision was Reno's alone. That should have settled it. Then the INS started doing its latest dance, promising to take no steps to remove Elian until the relatives have finished their appeal.

This is so Bill Clinton: Wiggle and waffle and evade responsibility, all the while pretending to be doing the right thing and following the law. Instead of making a decision that will make a lot of Miami Cubans mad, he has passed the buck to the courts.

"The boy should have been sent back before Christmas," says Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, which sponsored the grandmothers' visit.

Edgar said he urged INS Commissioner Doris Meissner to fly Elian's father here and let him take Elian home after Moore's decision last week. But the INS stalled again.

Now we're looking at an appeal which won't even be heard until early May, which will be well over six months since this protracted dispute started. And every day that passes is another day lost between a father and his son.

"Some would characterize this as an end game," says Bernard Perlmutter, an immigration law professor at the University of Miami. "I would call this an endless game."

Ira Kurzban, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, calls the INS' latest offer "a complete giveaway to the family."

"I don't believe they're serious in the objective of sending him back to Cuba. This is really about trying to appease the State Department, because we'd look silly internationally if we didn't at least appear to be pressing for the ... return of his child. But actually they're doing nothing to send Elian Gonzalez back."

Elian Gonzalez has been in Miami for four months, even though it was clear early on, from a legal standpoint, that he should be returned to his father.

And the longer he stays, the harder it will be for him to break the new ties he's built in Miami-to his great uncle, his cousin, to that cute Labrador retriever, to Disney World. This week, he told Diane Sawyer that he wants to stay in the United States.

But this has been wrong from the beginning. The Clinton administration isn't sending him back, because of 23 electoral votes and millions of dollars in campaign contributions from Florida residents. So it's prepared to let the case drag on for months more.

Once, I thought they were for real in trying to resolve this matter. Now I know it was just bunk.

Copyright 2000 Newsday

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