Cuban exiles in Miami have reacted angrily to the decision to send a six-year-old boy back to his father in Cuba and have asked for a court ruling against it.
President Clinton defended the decision, saying politics were kept out of the case.
"I told you when we started this that I would do my best to keep this decision out of politics. We have done that, we have not been involved in it," Mr Clinton said in Washington..
The head of the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS), Commissioner Doris Meissner, announced yesterday that Elian Gonzalez, whose mother was drowned trying to reach Florida by boat from Cuba, should be handed over to his divorced father. Elian was rescued on November 25th after clinging to a rubber tube for 24 hours and brought to Miami where he has been cared for by relatives.
His case has sparked an at times bitter debate in the United States over whether the wishes of Elian's dead mother to have him raised in the US should be respected or whether he should be returned to his father to live under communism in what many Americans see as a totalitarian state.
His case has also heightened tensions between the US and Cuba as anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the US have insisted that Elian be allowed stay in Miami with his grand-uncle. President Castro for his part has been demanding the return of the boy and there have been almost daily anti-American demonstrations in Cuba.
Commissioner Meissner announcing the INS decision said that "family re-unification has long been a cornerstone of both American immigration law and US practice. This little boy who has been through so much, belongs to his father."
She said that after two interviews with the father, Mr Juan Gonzalez, in Cuba, the INS was satisfied that he had "a close and continuous relationship" with his son in spite of the break-up of the marriage. "The father made it very clear that he wants Elian returned to him as soon as possible." She said that he should be reunited with his father by January 14th.
Mr Gonzalez has been reluctant to travel to Florida to recover his son until the legal situation has been clarified. He said he had no idea that his former wife intended to take Elian from Cuba with his step-father who was also drowned with eight other refugees when their boat capsized.
Cuban exiles in Miami, where Elian has now started elementary school, protested yesterday outside the home of his relatives and demanded that a federal court should hear an asylum petition for Elian to be allowed to stay in the US. Republican politicians representing areas where many Cuban exiles live have also protested against the INS decision.
A Florida Republican member of Congress, Mr Lincoln DiazBalart, accused the Clinton administration of backing down to Dr Castro. "They may wish to acquiesce to Castro's blackmail but they cannot do so in the face of US law," he said.
Mr Spencer Eig, a lawyer for the boy's Miami relatives, urged the attorney general, Ms Janet Reno, to grant an asylum hearing.
Ms Meissner said that Elian's father would be allowed to come to Florida to take him home or the INS could arrange for the boy to be escorted to Cuba if his father refused to come to the US.