Upon hearing that Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) Commissioner Doris M. Meissner was holding an awards ceremony for the INS agents involved in the April 22 raid on the home of Elian Gonzalez's Miami relatives, I remembered the prophetic words of George Orwell. "Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." The Clinton administration is attempting to rewrite a shameful chapter of American history with this awards ceremony ("Snatching Elian has its reward," Aug. 10).
     Laurence H. Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard University, described the raid as having "violated a basic principle of our society, a principle whose preservation lies at the core of ordered liberty under the rule of law."
     According to Mr. Tribe, under the Constitution, the executive branch has no unilateral authority to forcibly enter people's homes to remove innocent persons. Mr. Tribe has said that the agents who stormed the home of Elian's great-uncle, Lazaro Gonzalez, did not have a warrant to seize the child, but only to search the home.
     A second constitutional lawyer and expert on civil liberties, Alan Dershowitz, denounced the raid as an illegal operation, stating that the raid created the "terrible precedent that the administration can act without court approval and break into the home of an American citizen. It's a dangerous day for all Americans."
     Shame on the Clinton administration for ordering civil servants to carry out illegal actions that do violence to our Constitution and our way of life. Shame on those men and women who followed illegal orders rather than the law they are sworn to uphold. It was not only the home of the Gonzalez family that was attacked on April 22, but also our Constitution. Let us use these awards of shame to remember, speak the truth and defend our fundamental freedoms.
     JOHN SUAREZ
     Miami