Able Ramirez is no longer a member of the Alto Town Council. He is also no longer in the United States.
Ramirez was appointed to the government post back in April after no one else would take the job. He was arrested on June 8 and charged with 2 counts of Battery/Family Violence and booked into the Habersham County Detention Center. It was there authorities learned his real name – Able Ramirez Garcia.
“When his fingerprints hit the state database they also went to the federal database,” explains Sheriff Joey Terrell. “That’s when ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) found him.”
The feds put a hold on Ramirez-Garcia and, in order to clear the way for the feds to take him, the local court reduced his charges down to simple assault with “time served/sentenced to probation.”
ICE agents picked him up on June 15 and, according to Terrell, he has since been deported from the United States.
While it is still not clear where he came from originally, back in April when he was going by Abel Ramirez, he told Now Habersham that he’d come to Alto from Pennsylvania in 1996. The social security number listed on his booking report was issued in the early 90s in that state.
While he was living here, he held a valid Georgia driver’s license and worked full time at Mt. Vernon Mills. He also built a successful side business “Party Time Tables and Chairs for Rent” on the Gainesville Highway.
“This town helped me when I came here and in return I want to help them back,” he said on the night he became a councilman.
The result of all this is that Alto’s Post 2 council seat is left vacant once again. The town went for almost a year without a full council after former council member Loretta “Jacki” Bosco moved from Alto to Baldwin last spring.
It is unclear what government leaders there plan to do now, calls to the Alto Town Hall and electronic messages to council members went unanswered before this article was published.
