INS INVESTIGATES POSSIBILITY THAT IT MISTAKENLY DEPORTED US CITIZEN

Edgar Garfield Gibbons has been in Guyana, a country on the north coast of South America, since being deported there in April 1999.  He claims it is the first time he has ever been out of the US, that he is a US citizen, and that his deportation was the result of a nightmarish bureaucratic mix-up.  Guyana’s government agrees, and has announced that it will begin demanding more proof when someone is deported there.

Gibbons’ encounter with the INS began last April when he was released from prison after serving a year for possession and distribution of marijuana.  He says immigration officials met him as he walked out of prison, loaded him on a plane and sent him to Guyana.  A deportation order against him had been finalized while he was in prison.

A woman in Guyana who US officials believed was Gibbons’ cousin said upon meeting him “he is no relative of mine.”  She told officials she does have a cousin named Edgar Garfield Gibbons, who moved to the US in 1978.  She provided his number to the Associated Press.  When they contacted him, he said he was from Guyana, and had never been in trouble with the law. 

This turn of events has caused the INS to investigate the possibility that it mixed the two men up. They were born only five days apart and have the same name.  It has also caused concern that the US is careless about whom it deports and that its actions may, in some cases, be the result of racism.  The INS defends itself, however, saying Gibbons’ admitted to being from Guyana and asked to be deported there.  Gibbons’ says he said that in sarcasm after officials refused to believe his claim of citizenship.  Unfortunately, he has no passport, birth certificate or other document clearly demonstrating his US citizenship.