Advancing Justice-Atlanta Calls for Immediate Release of Alma Bowman and for Federal Government to Recognize Her Claim to American Citizenship
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 02, 2025
CONTACT:
James Woo, Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta, Director of Communications, media@advancingjustice-atlanta.org,
ATLANTA, GEORGIA - Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta (Advancing Justice-Atlanta) condemns the unjust and unnecessary detainment of 58-year old Filipina woman, Alma Bowman and calls for her immediate release and reunification with her family in Macon, Georgia.
Alma has lived in Macon, Georgia for nearly 50 years. Her father was a U.S. citizen serving in the U.S. Navy when he met Alma’s mother in the Philippines where Alma was born.
On March 26, Alma attended her routine check-in to the ICE Atlanta Field Office in a wheelchair, with her two children, legal team and a crowd of supporters. Inside, she was separated from her family and only one of her two attorneys was allowed to go with her. ICE officers told her that she needed to be separated from her attorney to be fingerprinted. Instead of fingerprinted, she was detained and sent to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, where she is currently being held.
Alma was previously detained by ICE for nearly three years in three different detention facilities across the country. She endured separation from her two children and experienced medical negligence for her chronic health conditions and inhumane living conditions. She eventually became a key witness and survivor to non-consensual procedures being committed by a doctor, including non-consensual gynecological procedures, against women in the Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia (ICDC), which was investigated and condemned by the U.S. Senate and which has since closed. Alma was released from the ICDC in 2020 due to health risks from the COVID-19 pandemic. The ICDC stopped operating as an ICE facility in 2021 in large part due to the critical advocacy led by survivors such as Alma. The Stewart Detention Center (Stewart) where Alma is currently detained, is just as dangerous as the Irwin County Detention Center and women detained there have spoken out about abuses by a medical health professional. Stewart has a long legacy of human rights abuses and has been referred to as one of the deadliest in the nation.
Alma has been a fierce advocate, both inside and outside of detention. She has been a spokesperson for the campaign for Congress to pass the Equal Citizenship for Children Act, which would more fully repair the harm of the Guyer Rule, a 1940s-era racially discriminatory law that prevented U.S.-citizen fathers from passing their citizenship status to children born outside of the U.S. and outside of marriage.
Alma has no known family in the Philippines. The Philippine government has been unable to locate her birth record. During her previous detention in ICE custody, the Philippine government was unable to obtain a travel document for her. Alma’s legal team fears that the Philippine government will again be unable to obtain a travel document and that Alma will be held indefinitely.
“Alma should be at home with her family, not deprived of her freedoms in a detention center,” said Samantha Hamilton, Advancing Justice-Atlanta Staff Attorney. “We will continue to fight her unjust detention until she is released.”
Alma is supported by Malaya Movement USA, GABRIELA USA, Migrante USA, and BAYAN USA. The Justice for Alma Bowman Campaign is part of the National Defend Migrant Workers Campaign and Tanggol Migrante Network.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the civil rights of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI), and other marginalized communities in Georgia and the Southeast.
