Quite Special

Man Asks to Be Deported to Heaven

An Alaskan ‘sovereign citizen’ suggested a judge could send him to heaven in lieu of paying child support.

If your name is “Birdman” and you find yourself in court for failing to pay tens of thousands of dollars in child support, perhaps don’t ask the judge if he can deport you to heaven. The judge might laugh at you.

Last week, Kevin Francis Ramey, a 57-year-old resident of Togiak, Alaska, who goes by the nickname “Birdman,” was arrested in his hometown and flown to Dillingham to appear in appear in court for allegedly refusing to pay more than $84,000 in back child support. “Birdman” proceeded to ask the judge a question involving divine citizenship.

“[The law] says if you’re not a U.S. citizen you could be deported,” he said, according to KDLG-AM. “I know I have three citizenships: number one in heaven, number two in America, number three in California. And that’s my primary citizenship, is of course, in heaven. So I was kinda wondering, are you guys going to deport me to heaven?”

“That was a very legal question…I’m a citizen of heaven, the Bible tells us that,” Ramey told The Daily Beast. He was not, however, speaking literally. “What are they gonna do, put me in front of a firing squad and deport me to heaven? No.”

Ramey, a former member of the Togiak City Council, leads a foundation called Sui Juris Court Angels, a sovereign citizen organization. Because of his diehard views on sovereign citizenry, Ramey believes the state lacks the authority to charge him with a class C felony for failing to pay child support.

Hence that heaven stuff. He went on to say he feels this case is a “far broader issue than not paying child support” and that he is willing to go to jail for his beliefs about the state.

“I’ve been fighting for 20 years to make sure the state doesn’t do to my boys what they did to me,” he said. “That’s the best support I can give them. [The state] has taken from me everything I own.”

Beyond sovereign citizenry and not paying child support, there are other hot-button issues he cares about. A scan of his foundation’s Facebook page yields a plethora of warnings and anti-government outrage. “Here we go again…first they develop corporations that can think for themselves and now we have the birth of the corporate robots that can think for themselves!!!” a post from May reads, linking to a story about robots “capable for learning and thinking” for themselves. “Can anyone guess the next thing the natural man will be warring with???”

Cyborgs. Most likely.

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Asawin SuebsaengSenior Political Reporter

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