LISTEN: Born in the Philippines to an American father and Filipino mother, Alma Bowman came to the U.S. at age 10, grew up and had her own family as a citizen of the U.S. But the 59-year-old, ICE persists, is in the country illegally. GPB's Grant Blankenship explains.
Alma Bowman wasn’t ready to lose her freedom.
It was March 26, a warm and sunny day backdrop to a day that weighed heavily on Bowman and her loved ones. She arrived at the ICE field office off Ted Turner Drive with her two children, Chris and John Mitchell, and her attorney, Samantha Hamilton, and joined a long line of people waiting to enter the building.
The weeks leading up to the check-in had been tense. It was two months into President Donald Trump’s second term — which he won in part by calling for a crackdown on immigration into the U.S. — and already Hamilton had heard rumors of people being suddenly detained at their check-ins.
The anxiety only grew that morning as the line inched forward. When it was Bowman’s turn to enter, ICE agents standing sentry in the front lobby told Bowman she could only bring one person in with her. She chose Hamilton.
Hamilton feared the worst, but didn’t want Bowman to worry. Instead, she steeled herself as the line moved forward and focused on pushing Bowman in the wheelchair she relies on to get around.
When Alma’s name was called, ICE agents commanded her to follow them downstairs. Bowman had never been asked to do something like that before, and both Bowman and Hamilton started to panic. Hamilton asked to go with Bowman, but ICE agents said no one could accompany her.
The next several seconds were a blur. The agents started to pull Bowman away, and with every second that passed Hamilton grew more desperate to stop what was happening.
“Who will push her wheelchair?” Hamilton asked.
One of the agents — a burly man dressed in black — started to push Alma but ran her wheelchair into a wall. Agents asked Hamilton if Bowman could walk.
Hamilton said no and asked again to follow Bowman, but several ICE agents stationed around the lobby shouted at Hamilton to let Bowman go. Agents whisked Bowman into an elevator, and moments later she was gone.
Hamilton emerged from the ICE office with tears streaking her face and rejoined Chris and John Mitchell outside. It didn’t take many words for them to figure out what had happened. “I’m sorry guys, I failed her,” Hamilton said.
Bowman was detained that day and sent to Stewart Detention Center, where she remained Wednesday as ICE persists with the allegation that she is in the country illegally.
Bowman was born in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, in 1966. Her father, Lawrence Bowman, was an American Navy veteran from Illinois and a U.S. citizen. Her mother, Lolita Catarungan Bowman, was from the Philippines. According to Bowman’s father’s obituary, her parents married about a year before her birth.
After her father completed his military service, he and Bowman’s mother went to the U.S. so he could finish college. Bowman stayed with her aunt in the Philippines until her father graduated and got a full-time job with the IRS in Macon. She came to the U.S. when she was 10 years old and has lived in Middle Georgia since then.
Her detainment sparked a fierce and complicated legal battle that highlights the intricate nature of American immigration policy, and the families that find themselves at the heart of the debate.
For more than a decade now, disputes have persisted over whether her family connections qualify her as a citizen in the U.S.
Bowman, her family and Hamilton argue she is a U.S. citizen and is being held unlawfully. Meanwhile, Bowman and her attorney allege she faces unsafe conditions in Stewart Detention Center and is being denied due process as her loved ones fight for her release.
Hamilton said Bowman’s story is one that shines a light on the complexity of U.S. immigration policy, and shows how racism can often disrupt the citizenship process.
Bowman spent her life believing she was a citizen. That changed in 2013, when she was jailed for writing bad checks amounting to about $1,200, court records show. At about the same time, Bowman pleaded guilty to three counts of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and one count of possession of methamphetamine.
Records show Bowman was given a questionnaire to fill out regarding her guilty plea that said she was pleading guilty to a “deportable offense.” Thinking nothing of it, Bowman checked that she understood.
According to Moffitt Law, LLC, a law firm based in Georgia that offers immigration law services, deportable offenses are determined by immigration officers and can include fraud, money laundering, firearms trafficking, drug offenses and domestic violence.
Deportable offenses can even cause lawful permanent residents — which was Bowman’s status at the time of these crimes, according to Hamilton — to be deported.
The charges came back to haunt her. Bowman was pulled over during a routine traffic stop in Fulton County in 2017, a year after Trump was first elected to the White House.
ICE agents alleged that her status as a lawful permanent resident had been revoked due to her past criminal convictions, Bowman and Hamilton said. She was detained in the Irwin County Detention Center as ICE prepared to deport her to the Philippines.
The news of Bowman’s detainment sent her family reeling.
“We’ve always understood her as a citizen, now they’re saying she’s really not,” said Bowman’s daughter, Chris Mitchell. “We didn’t know how to go about this, we were that blindsided.”
For much of her first detainment, Bowman had no attorney. The family didn’t have the money to hire one, and many pro bono lawyers didn’t want to take the case due to its complexity. Chris and John Mitchell found themselves scrambling to understand immigration law — an area of law notorious for being complicated and ever-changing.
Meanwhile, Bowman said Irwin was horrific. She witnessed hysterectomies performed on women detained at the facility that Project South — a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta that focuses on social justice issues — called “invasive and medically unnecessary” in a 2021 report.
Bowman played a major role in alerting media and watchdog groups to the procedures, acting as a whistleblower and informing Project South of what she witnessed while she was detained in Irwin between 2017 and 2020.
According to her, many detainees spoke little to no English, and doctors exploited the language barrier to make women believe the procedures were necessary to treat health conditions.
Additionally, Bowman said detainees at Irwin did not receive adequate medical care, particularly as COVID-19 swept through the facility in 2020. Detainees were kept in overcrowded dorms, and Bowman said ICE hardly tested new detainees for COVID-19 as they entered the facility, causing the virus to rip through Irwin’s population.
Bowman didn’t spend all of her three years in detainment at Irwin, though. At the start of 2020, ICE sent Bowman to Arizona for processing as they prepared to deport her to the Philippines. After a few weeks, she was moved to a facility in Texas.
However, proceedings stalled due to ICE’s inability to secure a travel document. A travel document is a document the U.S. government files for in order to facilitate a deportation. The country to which an individual is being deported to is responsible for processing the document.
Hamilton said that while the U.S. government did file for the document, the Philippines never processed it. The Filipino government has never given a reason why. As a result, Bowman remained in limbo in Texas for about a month as authorities continued to try and deport her.
“I never heard anything of what became of those travel documents,” Bowman said.
It wasn’t until Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Georgia) heard about Bowman’s case in February 2020 and brought national attention to ensure she was allowed to return to Georgia. She arrived back in Irwin in November 2020, after spending months away.
Bowman was able to secure a humanitarian release as a result of COVID-19 just a few weeks later. She suffers from chronic respiratory issues, and was able to convince a judge to free her from Irwin on account of the danger the virus posed to her health. She returned home to her children in December 2020.
Bowman and her family experienced relative quiet regarding her immigration status after Trump’s departure from office in January 2021.
As a condition of her release from Irwin, Bowman had to attend check-ins with ICE every three months. She kept track of her appointments religiously, she and Hamilton said. Soon, ICE allowed her to check in just once every six months. By the start of this year, she only had to check in annually.
“I never missed a report, I never even missed a phone call,” Bowman said.
Nevertheless, Bowman and her family felt uneasy as they watched support for Trump and his promised immigration crackdown rise ahead of the 2024 presidential race. In Jones County, where Chris and John Mitchell live and where about 69% of voters voted for Trump in November, co-workers, neighbors and friends echoed some of Trump’s talking points.
Chris Mitchell said she told her mother’s story to a friend in the area shortly after Bowman was detained the first time. The friend showed little empathy, and said Bowman shouldn’t have come here illegally.
Others dismissed Chris and John Mitchell’s concerns, saying deportations only happened to violent criminals, or asked them why Bowman didn’t figure out her status sooner.
“I’m always like, ‘Wow, what a great thing to say to someone you’re calling your friend,’” John Mitchell said, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Things only got worse after the election.
Hamilton began hearing reports of people being suddenly detained at their check-ins with ICE or after being stopped for things as small as traffic offenses.
Chris and John feared that every day could be their last with their mother.
“I tried to eat out with her more, I tried to spend as much time with her as possible because there’s that terror of knowing that this is probably going to happen,” Chris Mitchell said. “I was thinking, ‘What can I do to make it better? What can I do to make this a memorable moment?’”
The night before Bowman’s check-in with ICE in March, Chris, John, Hamilton and members of MALAYA Movement USA — a nonprofit group that advocates for Filipino Americans — held a karaoke party to rally support for her.
Attendees sang together and painted signs with slogans supporting Bowman and the Filipino community. For just one night, it felt like things might be okay.
The following day, Bowman was arrested.
Hamilton said Bowman has no court date and has not spoken with a judge since being put in Stewart because her order of removal is final. In order to make arguments to an immigration judge, Hamilton said, Bowman would need to introduce new facts to an immigration court to demonstrate that her proceedings should be re-opened.
Bowman said she is trying to stay hopeful. John and Chris Mitchell set up a social media campaign — Justice for Alma Bowman — to raise awareness and solicit donations.
She calls her children from the crackling prison phones nearly every day to remind them she loves them. Sometimes she is in good spirits, cracking jokes as Chris and John laugh in their living room on the other end of the phone. Other times she can hardly do anything but cry while they console her.
“It’s just a tossup of how the call goes,” John said. “Sometimes it’ll be a bad day in there and there’s a lot more tears, and some days it’s going pretty OK.”
Bowman called the conditions in Stewart “awful.” The detention center is overcrowded as ICE carries out large numbers of detainments, and Bowman said detainees often don’t receive adequate medical care.
She needs a CPAP machine when she sleeps — a medical device that helps people with respiratory conditions sleep by keeping airways open — but alleges she often has to beg staff to give her the machine. There have been some nights where staff didn’t give it to her at all, she and her children said.
CoreCivic, the private company that operates Stewart Detention Center, said in an email to The Telegraph that staff have worked “very closely” with Bowman to accommodate her needs, and said they were aware of only one instance where she didn’t have access to her CPAP machine.
CoreCivic said it has a written statement from Bowman saying that “she does not have any concerns related to her medical equipment being provided by our staff.” CoreCivic did not provide a copy of the statement.
Bowman also alleged that staff was slow to respond to other detainees’ medical needs, and often lacked adequate equipment to serve everyone in Stewart. News outlets have also reported detainees being forced to sleep on concrete floors due to overcrowding, and The Telegraph previously reported a detainee dying in Stewart on June 7.
“Our health services teams follow both CoreCivic’s standards for medical care and the standards set forth by our government partners,” said Ryan Gustin, senior director for public affairs with CoreCivic. “All detainees have daily access to sign up for medical care, including mental health services. Our clinic is staffed with licensed, credentialed doctors, nurses and mental health professionals who contractually meet the highest standards of care, as verified by multiple audits and inspections. ”
Bowman, her family and Hamilton have staked their argument about Bowman’s citizenship on her father being a citizen.
Under U.S. law, a person is eligible for U.S. citizenship if they are the “genetic, legitimated or adopted son or daughter of a U.S. citizen,” according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Hamilton and Bowman said that Lawrence Bowman is listed on Bowman’s birth certificate as her father. After she was born, Lawrence Bowman submitted paperwork to the U.S. embassy in the Philippines to claim citizenship for Bowman.
However, Bowman discovered during her first detainment as she fought for her freedom from Irwin that the embassy never processed the request. Instead, it sent a brief letter addressed to her mother casting doubt on the claim that Bowman was her father’s biological daughter.
Hamilton said she doubts the veracity of the letter because it is only two sentences long and doesn’t offer any evidence or explanation as to why the embassy doubted Bowman’s parentage. Additionally, the embassy addressed the letter to Bowman’s mother — who had an elementary school education — rather than her father who filed the paperwork.
Before Bowman’s father brought her to the U.S., he made another attempt at gaining Bowman citizenship by giving an affidavit attesting that she was his blood daughter to legitimate her. Despite these attempts, Bowman was considered a lawful permanent resident, not a citizen, when she came to the U.S. in 1977.
Bowman remained unaware of the questions surrounding her citizenship for nearly 40 years.
Hamilton said she believes the U.S. embassy doubting Bowman’s relation to Lawrence Bowman and their failure to grant her citizenship is part of a larger pattern of discrimination by the U.S. against the Asian children of U.S. service members and foreign parents who were born while their fathers were abroad.
“The American embassy in the Philippines and embassies across Asian countries had a pattern and practice systemically of denying U.S. citizenship to children born out of wedlock to U.S. military service members,” Hamilton said. “This is all situated within the deeper history of anti-Asian racism that the United States has exhibited for centuries.”
The U.S. attempted to rectify the situation by passing the Amerasian Act, which was passed in 1982 and granted preferential immigration and eventual citizenship rights to the children of U.S. service members and their Asian partners during the Vietnam War. However, the act is limited to just five birth countries — Cambodia, Laos, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam.
As a result of this discrimination, Bowman and Hamilton argue, Bowman was denied rightful citizenship and is being held by ICE unlawfully.
“Some people will say, ‘She’s been here for 50 years, and her parents never applied for her?’” Hamilton said. “I think that analysis is overly individualistic and, frankly, really excuses the United States government’s systemic and intentional practice of exploiting the Filipino people and the people of other countries where the U.S. government has set up military bases.”
Meanwhile, ICE questions Bowman’s parentage.
Despite being presented with these documents, ICE is insisting that Bowman must present DNA evidence of her relationship to Lawrence Bowman.
The issue is, Lawrence Bowman died in 1995.
Bowman isn’t in touch with any relatives on her father’s side, either.
In order to obtain a DNA sample, she would have to exhume her father’s body and obtain enough genetic material for a sample, an endeavor that could cost $20,000 to $30,000, Hamilton said.
This isn’t the only instance of the U.S. government demanding such a high burden of proof.
Rose Cuison-Villazor, an attorney and professor at Rutgers Law School who specializes in immigration law, said her research into the subject of citizenship and the children of U.S. service members found that the children of military personnel and civilian employees working with the U.S. military often face more scrutiny when it comes to immigration and citizenship.
“It’s just another example of the nation’s color line,” Cuison-Villazor said.
She ran into a similar issue as Hamilton and Bowman when she was representing a woman who was born in Japan to a U.S. citizen in the military and a Japanese national.
Immigration officers were asking the woman to present DNA evidence of her relationship to her father. By happenstance, the body of the woman’s father was already being exhumed and she was able to obtain a DNA test demonstrating their shared blood.
Hamilton and Bowman doubt it’s possible for Bowman to clear such a hurdle, and Hamilton argues that such a requirement is excessive in light of other documentation.
“It’s just so ridiculous,” Hamilton said. “They’re erecting these barriers that have no basis in law. They need to get over it and finally pay attention to the evidence that (Bowman) has been putting forth for years.”
ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story.
Beneath the court documents, attorneys, legal jargon and politics, though, is a family clinging together.
John Mitchell said he takes it day-by-day, and finds himself compartmentalizing to get through while his mother sits in Stewart.
“I still have some hope, regardless of everything that’s happened,” John Mitchell said.
Chris Mitchell focuses on her job at a comic book store, the same store where Bowman would often help during the holiday season. An avid lover of comics, cartoons and all things pop culture, Bowman was always happy to chat with customers about their interests.
Sometimes, when the monotony of organizing merchandise or ringing up orders has distracted her from her pain, a customer comes in and asks Chris what Bowman is up to these days. Her emotions come flooding back as she explains the detainment.
“God, I hate it when people ask me because I’m like, ‘I can’t lie to you, I don’t really want to bring you down,’” Chris said. “‘And if you cry, I’m going to cry.’”
Hamilton said she can’t reveal too much about the next steps in Bowman’s case, but said that she is “hopeful ICE will release (Bowman) soon.” Hamilton did not expand on this.
Bowman said she wants to fight and speak out to demonstrate to others how current policy can harm immigrants, regardless of their status.
“I was wanting to fight because a lot of people say, ‘Oh, they can’t deport me because I have a green card,’” Bowman said. “Just because you got your green card does not protect you from being deported.
“If ICE wants you gone, you’re gone.”
This story was originally published June 26, 2025, and comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with the Macon Telegraph. GPB's Grant Blankenship provided additional reporting for radio July 17.
