Anywhere else, Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen’s child custody rulings would go largely unnoticed. But here, Cohen must decide a case that strikes at the heart of Miami’s largest community. With the future of a 5-year-old Cuban girl resting squarely on her shoulders, Cohen holds a kind of power that only a Miamian can understand.

The legal battle has been dubbed "the Eliana case" for its resemblance to the Elian Gonzalez custody saga between a Cuban father and exile relatives. That debacle, which encapsulated the Cuban-American community’s decades-long struggle of sacrifice and separation, incited daily protests before ending with horrific images of a heavily armed SWAT team taking a wide-eyed little boy from a Little Havana closet and whisking him away under the cover of darkness.

This new conflict, involving a wealthy Coral Gables family and a poor Cuban farmer, has been confined to Cohen’s courtroom.

Here’s a recap: The child’s mother, who brought the girl and her older half-brother to the United States in 2005, lost custody of the children when she later attempted suicide. The Florida Department of Children and Families placed the kids in foster care with Joe Cubas, a developer and former sports agent known for helping Cuban baseball players defect from the island, and his wife Maria. The Cubases adopted the girl’s half-brother, but when they attempted to adopt her, the girl’s father, Rafael Izquierdo, fought for custody. He plans to take her back to Cuba. Cohen ruled Aug. 27 that, since Izquierdo is a fit parent, the girl should be returned to her father. However, she stopped short of giving him immediate custody, and now the court must determine whether separation from her foster parents will cause the girl serious emotional harm.

"I thought her ruling was fair," said Aliette Hernandez, an attorney with Buckner, Shifrin, Rice and Etter, P.A. and an expert on the case. "It seemed she wanted to let the girl stay with the Cubas family, but didn’t have the legal precedent."

Cohen, who has been on the bench since 1992, was forced to defend herself early in the case against allegations that she might not be impartial since she is up for re-election in 2008. "Anyone who thinks I would make a decision based on an election doesn’t know me," she told the Miami Herald in August.

So far, she has towed a very thin line in the case and has helped to prevent citywide protests. But, ultimately, her decision could determine whether activists take to the streets as they did in that other case not so long ago.

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