Gibbons' social security number being used by other person
The continuing quest to ascertain the identity and nationality of deportee Edgar Garfield Gibbons took another twist yesterday. Stabroek News has discovered that the American social security number he claims to be his has been used by another person in the US, Jeffrey C Dunton Jr. The information indicates too that Dunton had used the number at least twice last year, once in October and once in December. Gibbons himself used the number twice in October 1996. This number was validly issued in 1988 in the state of Texas. The social security number listed on the immigration documents which were sent to Guyanese authorities when Gibbons was deported here was issued in 1987 in California. That number and the one used by Gibbons differ only by the sequence of the first three digits, which indicates the state in which the number was issued. The US embassy last week had indicated that it was Gibbons' obligation to prove that he was an American and that they had so far been unable to verify his birth in the United States, the schools he claimed to have attended in the Houston, Texas area and the death of his father Byfield Gibbons, in Vietnam in 1968. Both the Minister of Home Affairs, Ronald Gajraj and the Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon, have said recently that deporting Gibbons to the United States was not now an option. Gajraj has said too that there was no documentary evidence to say that Gibbons was not a Guyanese neither any to indicate what country he was a citizen of. Meanwhile, the New Jersey Star Ledger has reported that Edgar Garfield Gibbons, the Guyanese of the same name who is just four days older than the Gibbons here, had been informed that he was no longer under a cloud as it was confirmed that he was not in any way implicated with the gentleman here. The Gibbons now in the US had migrated there from Guyana in 1978. Gibbons' story has been picked up by the Associated Press and circulated widely in the United States but as yet has not elicited a response to verify that the Gibbons here was born and grew up in the United States. Gibbons who was deported to Guyana from a Harris County jail in Texas after serving a one year sentence for the possession of marijuana claims that he has always protested that he was not Guyanese.
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