If Barbara Lagoa is Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, it will forefront a subject that roiled the presidential election in 2000 — Elian Gonzalez.

I'm reading "Lagoa’s Role in Florida Will Be a Big Factor in Trump’s Supreme Court Pick/Judge Barbara Lagoa lacks some of the usual credentials of a Supreme Court justice, but her roots in the Cuban-American community could make her an attractive choice for President Trump" (NYT).

Ms. Lagoa represented a relative of a 5-year-old boy found off the Florida coast after his mother had drowned trying to cross over from Cuba. His name was Elián González. Federal agents would eventually seize Elián and return him to his father in Cuba, setting off political shock waves that arguably cost former Vice President Al Gore the 2000 presidential election when he lost Florida.

“After six months, countless briefs, a few all-nighters, two oral arguments and one midnight raid by armed commandos, we learned what it was like to lose,” Eliot Pedrosa, another lawyer on the team, said at a ceremony last year when Judge Lagoa joined the Florida Supreme Court. The experience of “watching armed federal agents use force to pre-empt process,” he said, was “seared into her soul.”...

The Cuban-American community admired her work on Elián’s case, taking issue with the federal government’s position that the boy’s father, Juan Miguel González, was his sole legal guardian and had the right to make the decision to have him returned to Cuba. Also playing a role was a young lawyer named Brett M. Kavanaugh, now a Supreme Court justice himself, who represented the boy’s Miami relatives when they needed someone to work on a federal appeal....

Here's a March 10, 2000 NYT article that mentions Lagoa, "Federal Judge Fails to Rule On Fate of Cuban Youngster":

In a federal hearing that could be the first step in determining the future of Elian Gonzalez, lawyers for relatives of the 6-year-old boy argued today that he had been denied the due process granted to all other aliens who come to this country seeking asylum. Lawyers for the government countered that Elian was too young to read or understand an application for asylum and that his father in Cuba, who demands the boy's return, had the legal right to speak for his son.

That is how such cases are traditionally decided, in this country and around the world, based on common sense, Edwin S. Kneedler, the deputy United States solicitor general, said this morning in a hearing on a lawsuit filed by Elian's relatives in Miami, who seek an asylum hearing by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the boy..... ''Parents speak for their children,'' Mr. Kneedler said.

But lawyers for the boy's Miami relatives argued that there was no age limit in immigration laws for someone seeking asylum, and that Elian, who was found floating on an inner tube off South Florida on Thanksgiving Day, had formally requested asylum.

He has signed a request for asylum, ''and he understands it,'' said Barbara Lagoa, a lawyer for the boy's great-uncle Lazaro Gonzalez.

Elian, whose mother, Elizabet Brotons, drowned along with 10 other Cubans in their effort to reach the United States, has said that he wants to remain in Miami, and understands that a request for asylum would allow that, said lawyers and relatives here in Miami.

Ms. Lagoa, one of eight lawyers gathered around the plaintiff's table, used immigration law as a hammer to pound out her argument for an asylum hearing. ''Any alien may apply for asylum, without exception,'' Ms. Lagoa said. ''The statute applies to any alien, and a child's right to seek asylum is well established. The statute is as inclusive as Congress could have made it.''

Judge Moore pressed Mr. Kneedler on the way the immigration service has handled the case, asking him why, if Juan Gonzalez is the only one who can speak for the boy's legal rights, did the agency turn Elian over to Lazaro Gonzalez in the first place. 'You didn't put him in the custody of the father,'' Judge Moore said.

Mr. Kneedler said Elian was already traumatized by his ordeal -- he had drifted in the Atlantic for two days, terrified and dehydrated -- and it just made sense to parole the boy into the care of relatives who showed up at the hospital in Hollywood. 'It was a fast-moving situation, and it was a perfectly human response'' to place the child in the care of family, Mr. Kneedler said.

The family's lawyers asked that if the father was in legal control of his son's immigration status, why was he not here in court, fighting for him. Juan Gonzalez, who has the backing of President Fidel Castro of Cuba, has said he would not plead for his son in what he called a corrupt American court....

If Lagoa is the nominee, the Senate Judiciary hearings will spend time on this highly emotional subject. The 2000 election was determined by a few hundred votes in Florida, and it's easy to see how the feelings about the Elian Gonzalez case hurt Al Gore. Bringing the subject back up might not hurt Joe Biden, however, and stories about little children facing U.S. Immigration officials could backfire on Donald Trump.