Elian Gonzalez, born in 1994, is america's most famous refugee. He arrived in the US clinging to an inner-tube, after his mother and 10 other Cubans drowned when the boat they fled cuba in foundered off the coast of Florida in November 1999. Elian's great uncle, based in miami, gained temporary custody, but the US government ruled the boy must return to his father in Cuba. Elian has been returned to his father, now in America.

The US supreme court has ruled that he cannot be forced to stay in the US - despite a vigorous campaign by his Miami-based relatives to keep him there.

When Elian's father and Miami relatives couldn't come to an agreement, immigration officials resorted to a dawn raid on the Miami house on 22 April 2000. A photographer in the house snatched the dramatic picture of a clearly terrified Elian being snatched from his great uncle at gunpoint. Elian was reunited with his father, a move he appeared happy about, according to publicity shots and US psychologists.

Elian stayed in Miami with his great uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, and other relatives who have temporary custody of the boy. Exiled Cubans make up a third of Miami's population and, as one of America's most successful post-war immigrant groups, dominate the politics of southern Florida. Stridently anti-communist Cuban exile groups, including the Free Cuba Foundation and refugee support group Brothers to the Rescue, backed Lazaro Gonzalez's desire to keep Elian in the US. Anti-Castro protestors threatened to burn Miami if the boy they called "a little miracle", and compared to Moses in the bulrushes, returned to Cuba with his father.finally elian returned with his father to cuba, which was seen by fidel castro as a great victory for cuba over american imperialism. elian has become the focus of a social and political firestorm that transfixed the U.

S. and rock Miami's Cuban-American community, (called 'miami mob' in the song, which is the nickname given to them by the cuban government), to its core.