FBI, Interpol to check deportee's fingerprints
THE United States Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) has extended its search worldwide to determine the nationality of the man deported here last year but who claims he is an American. Head of the U.S. Embassy Consular section here, Mr Vincent Principe yesterday confirmed a report in an American newspaper that the man's fingerprints were sent to Interpol (the International Police Organisation) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to run international checks to determine his identity. The man known as Edgar Garfield Gibbons has been unable to satisfy U.S. authorities that he is U.S.-born and the Guyana Government said it has established that he is not Guyanese. Principe yesterday said the embassy is in regular contact with the INS and "no effort is being spared in trying to get to the bottom of this case." "It's a high priority case to the immigration service...and hopefully (it will be solved) sooner rather than later," the U.S. Embassy official told the Chronicle. Spokesperson for the INS in Texas, Ms Luisa Aquino, told the Chronicle by telephone about two weeks ago the agency is certain that deportee Edgar Garfield Gibbons is not a U.S. citizen. She said then the agency hoped to bring the matter to close within 48 hours. "...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. Aquino said there is no record at the Registrar's office of Gibbons being born in Munroe, Louisiana as he claims, nor at the schools in Houston Texas where he says he went to - intermediate nor high. 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 to Guyana. 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 that the papers were prepared by the Guyana consulate there. However, she pointed out that the INS has been in contact with the New Jersey Gibbons 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. A spokesman at the consular section of the U.S. Embassy had promised that the mission will soon be sending Gibbons, who is a guest at the Brickdam Police Station, a letter officially informing him that he cannot be documented as a U.S. citizen based on the information he gave under oath. But yesterday the man said he has received no such letter so far. He said the last time he saw anyone from the U.S. Embassy was when an official went to witness the taking of his fingerprints. (MICHELLE ELPHAGE)
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