Alma Bella Bowman has lived in Macon, Georgia for nearly 50 years. She was born in the Philippines to a Filipina mother and a U.S. citizen father serving in the U.S. Navy when he met Alma’s mother. He later married her mother and brought them to the U.S., when Alma was still a child. Under the immigration laws in effect at the time, this should make her a U.S. citizen. 

Nevertheless, ICE has contested her claim to citizenship, and she was actually detained, ordered deported, and then released under an order of supervision in 2020 after a harrowing multi-year saga in ICE detention. That detention led to her being a whistleblower about non-consensual procedures done by doctors at Irwin Detention Center. She’s engaged in other very public human rights work against ICE and in support of immigrants’ and women’s rights. 

On March 26, 2025, 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 then told her that she needed to be separated from her attorney to be fingerprinted. Instead of being fingerprinted, she was detained and sent to Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia. Alma has been a fierce immigrants’ rights advocate, both inside and outside of detention. Since being detained on March 26, Alma has helped women in Stewart navigate the detention system and connect with advocates on the outside, and even shared her commissary funds. She has also 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.

On August 1, 2025, CCR and co-counsel and Asian Americans Advancing Justice - Atlanta, filed a habeas petition to put an end to ICE's wrongful detention of Ms. Bowman and seek her immediate release.