Navy vet’s daughter released after 8 months in ICE detention

Alma Bowman, a Filipino American activist, regained her freedom this week after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held her for eight months at Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.

Catch up: Bowman, who has lived in Macon for nearly 50 years, was released at 7 p.m. on Monday following 243 days in custody, though questions about her citizenship remain legally unresolved. ICE arrested her on March 26 during a check-in at the Atlanta Field Office, where she arrived by wheelchair with her children, attorneys and community supporters.

Her legal team from Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta and the Center for Constitutional Rights secured her release, supported by organizing from multiple groups. “We are super excited that Moomin gets to come home. It would have been another sad Thanksgiving without her,” her sons Chris and John Mitchell said.

Why this matters: Bowman’s case illustrates how outdated, discriminatory laws continue harming children born abroad to U.S. military personnel. She was born in 1966 in the Philippines to Lawrence Bowman, a U.S. Navy serviceman, and Filipina mother Lolita Catarungan Bowman. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, she should have automatically become a citizen through her father.

Instead, the government has repeatedly denied her claim, citing an old embassy letter that questioned her paternity despite Lawrence Bowman appearing on her birth certificate. U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) previously called the detention illegal, saying “She’s an American citizen. The fact that one of her parents was an American means that she is an American.”

Her eight-month detention also follows an earlier three-year detention from 2017 to 2020, demonstrating how people with credible citizenship claims still face prolonged incarceration and family separation. For Filipino American families with military ties spanning decades of Pacific operations, her experience exposes systemic vulnerabilities persisting across generations.

The big picture: Bowman’s release carries significance beyond one family’s reunion. In her previous detention at Irwin County Detention Center, she became a key whistleblower who helped expose allegations of a physician performing non-consensual gynecological procedures on detained immigrant women, bringing international attention to conditions at Georgia facilities. This history adds weight to concerns that her recent re-detention was part of a broader pattern targeting outspoken immigrant rights defenders.

Following her March arrest, Bowman filed a habeas corpus petition on July 30 contending her detention was unconstitutional and violated ICE regulations. A federal judge has yet to make a ruling.