Now the question is, how to get him back home

A new variety of parental nightmare:
14-year-old student flees to Cuba

Alfredo Diaz, a 10th-grader at G. Holmes Braddock Senior High, cleared an American Airlines security check and boarded a Miami-to-Nassau flight on Thursday, even though the carrier requires escorts for anyone under 15.

In case you think the kid looked old for his age - like my own son who's taller than I - you're wrong. Instead of checking dates of birth in the passports when clearly he is a minor, airport security must have been checking the shampoo bottles:

"I can't believe my son was able to go through all that security and no one stopped him or asked him about being so young and traveling alone," said the father, who is also named Alfredo Diaz. "My son is just under five feet tall and he's a young-looking 14."

Here's the problem:

Diaz, who owns a construction business and lives with his girlfriend and her two sons, ages 12 and 13, wants his son back, but he has hit a legal wall.

Miami-Dade police have told him they can do nothing for now because he has no written proof of custody.
. . .
A spokesman for the Interests Section said it can help minor U.S. citizens. There might be little it can do since Alfredo is Cuban-born, he willingly traveled to the island with his Cuban passport and he is with his birth mother.

We'll see just how well Fidel's doing. IF Fidel's not in a freezer somewhere and in full mental faculties, the upcoming PR and propaganda campaign will be enormous.

Update A friend wrote to say, "The only chance that kid has of getting out of Cuba is to become a medic and hope they'll send him to Venezuela!"

(technorati tags Cuba)