Teen fresh from Cuba gets cool reception
BY LUISA YANEZ
lyanez@MiamiHerald.com
A teenager who ran away from his father's West Miami-Dade home seven
months ago and flew to Cuba, where his mother lives, returned to Miami
on Sunday.
But the boy received a less-than-warm welcome from his still-seething
father, who turned him away at the front door as a news crew from
WLTV-Univisión 23 captured the confrontation.
''I can't take you back; you don't do what I tell you. I'm sorry,''
Alfredo Diaz told his son, 15, who had just flown into Miami
International Airport. ``I told you not to come. You're going to have to
call the police to see what they do with you.''
The teen, Alfredo Jr., then dialed his mother in Cuba on his cellphone
and said, ``Mamí, he says no. . . . He won't accept me.''
His mother became hysterical, according to the TV station, which is the
news partner of El Nuevo Herald.
The teen, who ran away in September, told the station he had called his
father on Thursday to tell him he was returning to South Florida, but
his father told him he wasn't welcome. Young Alfredo came anyway.
It was not known who paid for the trip or why he came back at this time.
When he called his father from MIA, no one answered. He called a friend
and asked him to call his father. No luck. The teenager then called the
television station, and a news crew picked him up and drove him to his
father's home, according to the station's report.
After Alfredo Jr. was turned away at the door, the crew drove him to
Miami-Dade police headquarters. The state Department of Children &
Families was called.
But by Monday morning, the father had softened his stance and decided to
accept his son back home.
''Yes, I've taken him back,'' the father told The Miami Herald when
reached on his cellphone. He declined to give further details about the
teen's current whereabouts or his travels to and from Cuba via the Bahamas.
Reporters were turned away Monday from the home, where the father lives
with his new family. He did not respond to numerous messages seeking
comment.
A man who answered the door said: ``The family doesn't want to talk;
they don't have to. This is America.''
It also remains unclear how Alfredo Jr. was able to return to South
Florida. Citing privacy laws relating to minors, immigration, welfare
and airlines spokesmen declined to comment on the case on Monday.
Back in September, the 10th-grader's brazen exploits made headlines. He
indicated his trip to Cuba had been well-planned. The teen told the
station he took his father's credit card and used it to purchase a
ticket on the Internet on an American Airlines' flight from Miami to
Nassau. He paid $157 for that leg of the trip. He then purchased a
second ticket, this one from Nassau to Cuba, for another $315.
On the day he left town, the teen secretly packed his bags and headed
for MIA, instead of going to G. Holmes Braddock Senior High.
Though traveling as an unaccompanied minor, he used his resident alien
card to board the flight to Nassau.
''The ticket agent asked me how old I was, and I said 14,'' he told the
station. ``Then he asked me again, and I said 15 and he let me get on
the plane.''
In Miami-Dade, his father, who owns a construction business, spent hours
frantically searching for his son. He learned that Alfredo Jr. was in
Cuba via a call from his ex-wife, Dailet.
The father tried to make sense of why his son had run away. Diaz, who
has legal resident status, came to the United States by way of Spain 13
years ago. He brought his son from Cuba seven years ago.
He let the teen visit his mother and sister in June and suspected he had
met a girl. At the time, the teen had also gotten in trouble at school,
he said.
Diaz theorized his son would soon miss life in Miami.
''I'm hoping he will spend a couple of months there without his
computer, plasma TV, iPod, and he'll want to come back,'' the father
told The Miami Herald last fall.
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