August 1, 2025, Atlanta – Today, Alma Bella Bowman, a longtime Georgia resident and immigrants’ rights activist unjustly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since March, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Georgia seeking her immediate release. She is represented by Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta (“Advancing Justice-Atlanta”) and the Center for Constitutional Rights. This is the second time she has been detained by ICE—for almost four years, cumulatively—even though she has lived in Macon, Georgia, for nearly 50 years and is in all likelihood a U.S. citizen.

Ms. Bowman's father was a U.S. citizen serving in the U.S. Navy when he met her mother in the Philippines, where Ms. Bowman was born. Under the law in effect at the time of her birth, she is a U.S. citizen. ICE, however, has long contested Ms. Bowman's claim to citizenship and has sought to deport her for years. Ms. Bowman was first detained by ICE from 2017 to 2020. During her first detention, she was detained in the Irwin County Detention Center, where she blew the whistle on abuse by a doctor who was performing non-consensual gynecological procedures on immigrant women. Ms. Bowman was released from ICE detention on an order of supervision in December 2020.

On March 26, 2025, Ms. Bowman attended her routine yearly check-in at the ICE Atlanta Field Office in a wheelchair, with her two children, legal team, and a crowd of supporters. Inside, ICE officers told her that she needed to be separated from her attorney to be fingerprinted. But instead of being fingerprinted, she was detained and sent to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

Ms. Bowman has been a fierce immigrants’ rights advocate, both inside and outside of detention. Since being detained on March 26, Ms. Bowman has helped women detained in Stewart navigate the detention system and connect with advocates. She has also been a spokesperson for the campaign for Congress to pass the Equal Citizenship for Children Act.

“No matter what color, no matter what race, what language you speak, we're all the same. We're all human,” Ms. Bowman said. “We shouldn't have to be separated from our families. We need to be treated equally. Family separation is terrible. And to me, it seems like it's ICE's main goal,” she added. “When I get out of here—and I pray to God I get released to my children—I pray to God that one day, there won't be no ICE.”

In her habeas petition, Ms. Bowman is challenging her detention as a violation of her constitutional rights to free speech and due process, of a federal law prohibiting ICE from detaining U.S. citizens, and of ICE's own rules on when it is allowed to re-detain people and when it is required to release people who provide evidence that they are U.S. citizens.

“Every day, I am inspired by Alma, who continues to fight tirelessly for her release and for the release of dozens of other women she has met during the last four months that she has been in Stewart,” said Samantha Hamilton, Staff Attorney with Advancing Justice-Atlanta. “Alma has lived in Georgia for almost 50 years. Her father was a U.S. citizen. She should not be in ICE detention. Nobody should be.”

“Alma’s detention is a blatant abuse of power — a cruel attempt to separate a family and to stymie Alma's advocacy on behalf of immigrants and women,” said Kayla Vinson, Staff Attorney with Center for Constitutional Rights. “Alma has lived under the specter of ICE detention and deportation for nearly a decade despite the fact that she is a U.S. citizen, under the law at the time of her birth. Still, she believes her unlawful detention is part of an inhumane and unjust system that no one should experience. We must keep fighting to dismantle the racist immigration apparatus that put her—and so many others—behind bars.”

Ms. Bowman 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.

For more information on the case, see here.

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.