'Gibbons' identified as Jamaican
James Dean Collins is his name and he is a Jamaican by birth, but the man who calls himself Edgar Garfield Gibbons and who was mistakenly deported to Guyana, still insists that he is an American and that his name is Gibbons. The mother of his two-year-old daughter, Denita Turner, told Sunday Stabroek that she had been informed by the FBI that his real name was Collins and that he had been born in Jamaica on November 15, 1958. She told Sunday Stabroek that Gibbons' real identity had been revealed to the FBI by another woman with whom he had an eight-year-old daughter. However, Gibbons has claimed that the name was one of several that the FBI had suggested to him since he returned to the United States from Guyana. After it was determined that Gibbons was not a Guyanese, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) called on the FBI and Interpol to help in ascertaining his true identity and nationality. Since March 3 Gibbons has been held at the Newton County Jail, in Newton, Texas. He is facing charges of illegal admission instituted after he arrived back in the United States. Gibbons was taken back at the insistence of Home Affairs Minister, Ronald Gajraj, after it was established that he was not Guyanese and he had been wrongly deported here by the INS. Turner told this newspaper that she was informed by the FBI that Gibbons' real name was Collins and that they had obtained a birth certificate for him which showed that he was born on November 14, 1958 and was a Jamaican. Gibbons was sent to Guyana by the INS in April 1999. He was mistaken for a Guyanese of the same name who immigrated to the US in 1978 and who has lived in the New York Tri-State area since then. The Guyanese Gibbons was born on November 5.
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