BY CAROL ROSENBERG
crosenberg@herald.com

BRUNSWICK, Ga. -- The federal agent captured on film with goggles and gun as he ordered Donato Dalrymple to relinquish Elián González from a Little Havana closet was here -- as was Betty Ann Mills, the agent who raced the boy to a nearby van, and got a spirited, sustained applause for it on Tuesday.

One by one, in graduation-ceremony style, the 100-plus agents of Operation Reunion took the stage at a federal law enforcers training academy here for a handshake and letter of commendation from U.S. Immigration Commissioner Doris Meissner.

``Our decision to conduct a tactical enforcement operation to reunite Elián González with his father after five months of separation sparked criticism that some have sought to reignite on the occasion of this ceremony,'' Meissner said in a prepared statement. ``It was my firm conviction, then and now, that we did the right thing on April 22, and we are doing it again today.''

Meissner, at the 1,500-acre training base for a two-day meeting with the district directors of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, invited 126 INS and Border Patrol agents to receive awards -- nearly 400 miles north of Little Havana.

In all, 114 agents attended, some in uniform, others in business attire, said John Shewairy, chief of staff to Miami District Director Robert Wallis.

Names were called, and officers took the stage in a solemn hourlong ceremony, added INS chief spokeswoman Maria Cardona of Washington, who refused media access to the event.

``It was law-enforcement sensitive. A lot of these guys have to count on their anonymity to do their job,'' she said.

Cardona reported that Mills, the Spanish-speaking agent who spirited the boy from the home in a white blanket, got a noteworthy ``lot of applause.'' She also spotted among the honorees the agent from the Border Police Tactical Unit, BORTAC, captured by an AP photographer pointing a gun in the direction of the child and Dalrymple. He has never been identified.

In her remarks, Meissner called the raid, in which gun-toting, pepper-spraying agents stormed through Lázaro González's front door and emerged with his 6-year-old great-nephew, ``the pivotal step in closing one of the most difficult chapters in the history of INS' work.''

``Your efforts paid off,'' Meissner added. ``This was evidenced when I went to Andrews Air Force base just hours after the operation and saw a safe Elián with his arms wrapped tightly around the neck of his beaming father.''

INS and Border Patrol agents typically train at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center here, not far from posh Jekyll Island, for such raids. A sprawling campus supported by a $151 million annual federal appropriation, it has firing ranges, classrooms for lectures and forensic and fingerprint labs.

Outside the gates Tuesday, four Cuban-American women from Miami's Mothers Against Repression stood vigil with a large sign proclaiming ``Is this cause for celebration?'' and a giant photo from the raid.

``This ceremony here is a travesty. They never should have had it,'' said Maria Eugenia Cosculluela, who drove through the night to arrive with fellow black-clad protesters Sylvia Iriondo, Rosa de la Cruz and Sylvia Karman.

Operation Reunion ``was a very sad day for us,'' she added. ``A poor little child, 6 years old, was petrified when he was taken out by the very huge force in Little Havana.''

Academy officials had designated a protest spot on the edge of their property, out of sight of the facility's main gate. With the permission of ``Sally's Cop Shop,'' a store that sells law enforcement gear, they moved to the shop's parking lot immediately opposite the entrance -- where they got occasional honks and thumbs-up signs from motorists who slowed to drive past their modest protest.

Said de la Cruz, who was overcome by a blast of pepper spray in the April 22 raid: ``It's a shame. Miami as a community is already Balkanized. People are hurt and this doesn't help at all.''

INS budgeted $25,000 for the awards event, Shewairy said, to cover transportation, hotels and per diems for the honorees. ``There was no extravagance to it whatsoever,'' he said. ``It was a proud, proud moment, and the Miami district has very few of them. And we enjoyed it.''

Disclosure of the event, which INS officials had planned to keep secret, stirred controversy back in Miami. Cardona said one reason why the commissioner invited the agents from Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Orlando and El Paso to Georgia was to avoid offending sensitivities.

``One of the criticisms, as you know, is the fact that this being done rubs salt in the wounds of an already sensitive community,'' she said. ``Well, we absolutely don't want to add to that.''

Nevertheless, demonstrators displayed their anger all day in front of INS headquarters at Biscayne Boulevard and 79th Street. Like the group in Georgia, they held pictures of the predawn raid, as well as Cuban and American flags with black ribbons attached.

Democracy leader Ramón Saúl Sánchez spoke to the crowd, as did Elián's great-uncle, who said they would gain victory, eventually.

``There's a higher authority that will right all wrongs by humans,'' Lázaro González said.

Herald staff writer Sabrina Walters contributed to this report.