Mystery mounts over U.S. deportee
by Robert Bazil
JUST who is the man known as Edgar Garfield Gibbons shipped here as a deportee by United States immigration last year? While he claims he is American, U.S. officials maintain he is not and Guyanese authorities say they have established he is not Guyanese. Spokesperson of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in Texas, Ms Luisa Aquino, told the Chronicle by telephone yesterday that the agency is certain he is not a U.S. citizen. "We hope to bring this matter to a conclusion in the next 48 hours or three days based on the information we have provided to other agencies...we are trying to determine which nationality he is", she said. "...Everything that he has told us since he was released into our custody by the Texas Department of Corrections has been erroneous...nothing has added up," Aquino said. There is no record at the Registrar's Office of Gibbons being born in Munroe, Louisiana, as he claims, nor at the intermediate or high schools in Houston, Texas where he says he went to. "We are following several leads...all the information he has provided has turned up nothing," Aquino said. She said that contrary to claims by Gibbons that he did not have a court hearing before being deported to Guyana, the prisoner went before an Immigration Judge where he said he was a Guyanese. She told the Chronicle that every person goes to trial before being "removed" from the U.S. The official declared: "Every person is entitled to due process and he had that...he was in our (INS) custody for 66 days prior to deportation." Gibbons was handed over to INS by the Texas Department of Corrections on February 19, 1999, and on March 26, 1999 documents for his removal from custody were completed. On April 26, 1999 the final order of removal from the country was received and he was deported. On Gibbons' claim that the travel documents used to deport him were fraudulent and bore the details of another Edgar Gibbons who lives in New Jersey, Aquino said the papers were prepared by the Guyana consulate there. However, she pointed out that the INS has been in contact with the Gibbons in New Jersey and is working with the Government of Guyana and the U.S. Embassy in Georgetown to solve the case. She explained that there is a programme under which criminal aliens are identified as they go to jail which the INS keeps track of, and as they near completion of their sentence, they are handed over for deportation. Meanwhile, a spokesman at the Consular section of the U.S. Embassy here yesterday said the mission will soon be sending Gibbons, who is in custody at the Brickdam Police Station, Georgetown, a letter officially informing him that he cannot be documented as a U.S. citizen based on the information he gave under oath. The official said the embassy was still trying to sort out the "truth from fiction" as it applies to the deportee who claims to be a U.S. citizen. "But we do know he is not who he purports to be," the official said. He indicated that the INS is still working with other law enforcement agencies to determine the true identity of "this gentleman". "We are in regular contact with the INS in the United States...as stated in an earlier press release, we will immediately make any significant new developments known to the press," he said.
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