Gibbons departs Guyana - nationalitystill unknown By Patrick Denny Stabroek News March 4, 2000 In much the same way in which he had arrived, Edgar Garfield Gibbons was spirited out of Guyana by United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officers last night. Gibbons was taken to the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, Timehri yesterday in a hush-hush operation by officers of the Guyana Police Force Narcotics Squad in handcuffs and handed over to two officers of the INS. He left Guyana on a North American Airways (NAA) flight bound for New York at 9:16 pm, courtesy of the US Government. A press release was issued by the US embassy at 9.30 pm confirming that Gibbons had left for the US. Contacted yesterday morning, US Embassy Consul General, Vincent Principe, said that the Gibbons case was still at a "delicate stage" and he could not say whether the issue of Gibbon's nationality had been resolved. Principe will hold a press conference at 11 am today to brief the media on Gibbons' departure. Gibbons had been deported as a Guyanese on April 28, 1999 and had been a guest of the Guyana Police at the Brickdam Police Station since then. Gibbons, who claimed to be an American by birth, was stranded here because he could not substantiate that claim. Gibbons had been taken to the airport on Thursday night by local law enforcement officers when he was originally scheduled to leave the country. However, the NAA flight had been rescheduled because of a mechanical problem which forced it to turn back to the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York about 90 minutes after it had left. The 41-year-old man, who had given his address as Houston, Texas, was put on a BWIA flight bound for Guyana last year by US federal and immigration authorities, who took him from a Huntsville, Texas penitentiary where he was serving a sentence for marijuana possession. After Stabroek News broke the story early in January, Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj, intervened and interviewed Gibbons at his Brickdam Ministry. He subsequently ordered an investigation by the police before taking up the case with the US Embassy here. The local police had said that they had ascertained, shortly after Gibbons' arrival here, that he was not a Guyanese and had passed this information to US embassy officials. It was learnt that Gibbons carries the same name as a Guyanese who arrived in New York on September 17, 1978. The Guyana police established that the Guyanese Gibbons had applied for a passport and left Guyana on that date. Further, after a confrontation arranged at CID Headquarters, Eve Leary, an aunt of the man whom the police located at Canal Number Two Polder, had told the police that the person deported here was not her nephew. This newspaper had also spoken with the Guyanese Gibbons's wife and mother, who confirmed that their husband and son had not returned to Guyana for many years. A telephone interview with the Guyanese Gibbons further established that he has lived in the New York Tri-State area since his migration in 1978. He had told Stabroek News that since he migrated to the US, he had never been arrested or been in any trouble with the police, nor had he ever gone to Texas. The Guyanese had recalled that about 16 years ago, he had lost his alien registration (green) card when he dropped his wallet in a shop where he had gone to purchase cigarettes. The loss of the wallet, he said, was reported to the INS and his green card was replaced weeks after. A notation was made in his passport, which he had had to produce to the INS office. The deported Gibbons had claimed that he was born in Monroe, Louisiana, that his father Byfield had died in Vietnam in 1968; and his mother Belinda of natural causes in 1969 in Monroe, Louisiana. He had told Stabroek News that he was first convicted of marijuana possession in 1993 and then in March 1998. The immigration papers which accompanied Gibbons here showed that on October 5, 1998, notice of his deportation was served on him with Charlotte K. Lang, an assistant district counsel, signing to that effect. Gibbons had travelled to Guyana on an emergency document issued by the Guyana Consulate at the request of the immigration authorities. Stabroek News had queried the procedure for issuing emergency travel documents to persons being deported and was told by Guyana's Consul General in New York, Brentnol Evans, that if the persons were in New York, they were usually taken to the consulate, but those from outside New York were not taken there. He had said that the travel document would only be issued after confirmation that the deportee was a Guyanese, based on the information supplied by the US immigration authorities. US Consul, Principe, was contacted around January 20, about steps to ascertain whether the deported man was an American citizen as he claimed and had taken a statement of bio-data and other information from him. Principe and embassy officials could not verify any of the information given by Gibbons and it was left to the INS to discover his nationality. After weeks of searching and unearthing nothing the INS had said that Gibbons was not an American and had sought the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Interpol in tracing his origin. The Guyana Government, secure in the knowledge that Gibbons was not a Guyanese had said that it would await the results of the search by US and international agencies and that Gibbons would remain here in the meantime as the local immigration authorities had accepted him as Guyanese. However, a week ago, as the saga dragged on seemimgly without end, Gajraj had issued a call for Gibbons to be taken back to the US within a fortnight. Gajraj said that the premise on which Gibbons was deported to Guyana had been proven false and the government was not prepared to accommodate Gibbons while the US authorities changed their position.