Case of Filipino American detained by ICE could affect status of thousands of US citizens

AAJA-ATLANTA

Filipino American Alma Bowman (center) with her two children.

A Filipino American detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) filed a legal action to gain her freedom.

Alma Bella Bowman, a longtime Georgia resident and immigrants’ rights activist under ICE detention since March, filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the US District Court for the Middle District of Georgia seeking her immediate release. 

"As someone whose late father honorably served the country and who has spent nearly her entire life in the US, Alma should not be behind bars or separated from her family,” said Samantha Hamilton, staff attorney at Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta. 

“We are fighting not just for Alma’s freedom but for the rights of all immigrants wrongly detained by the government,” Hamilton told the Inquirer.

Her case potentially has wide-ranging implications and could affect perhaps thousands of US citizens who were born outside of the continental United States fathered by US service personnel.

A "writ of habeas corpus" is a court order that directs a custodian (like a warden) to bring a prisoner before the court to determine the legality of their detention. It's a fundamental legal mechanism to ensure that individuals are not imprisoned unlawfully and to protect against arbitrary detention.

She is represented by AAAJ-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.

Born in 1966 in the Philippines, to a US citizen father who was serving in the US Navy and a Filipina mother, Bowman moved to the US with her parents as an adolescent.

“I always thought that I was a citizen of the United States,” Bowman said. She has two US citizen children and is married to a U.S. citizen, whom she is separated from.

Under the law in effect at the time of her birth, she is a US citizen. ICE, however, has long contested Alma’s claim to citizenship and has sought to deport her for years.

Bowman’s lawyers, it’s not uncommon for foreign-born children of U.S. service members to face roadblocks to having their citizenship recognized.

Bowman's US citizenship granted to children born of US citizens was common practice as US service personnel was assigned to foreign stations and had spouses of that country. At the time of Bowman's birth, two of America's largest foreign military bases were located in the Philippines -- the US Naval Base in Subic Bay and Clark Air Base in Angeles City where thousands of service personnel passed through enroute to the military actions in Korea nad Vietnam.

“There was a common practice in the mid-1900s, when the US was involved in all of these wars in other places, of trying to deny the citizenship of the children that were born from American military men going abroad,” said Kayla Vinson, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Bowman. 

“The laws of the time made those children citizens, and the US military and the US government have a practice of trying to deny the existence of those children and the US citizenship claims of those children,” she told the Georgia Recorder.

In her habeas petition, Alma 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 US 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 US citizens.

One of the reasons ICE is pouring a lot of resources to deport Bowman may be  because she is a key witness against ICE abuse.

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. 

Bowman was released from ICE detention on an order of supervision in December 2020.

On March 26 this year, Alma attended her routine yearly check-in at the ICE Atlanta Field Office required by law. Obeying the law, she went to her appointment in a wheelchair, with her two children, legal team, and a crowd of supporters.

AAAJ-ATLANTA

Alma Bowman, (in wheelchair) with her supporters in Georgia

 

“They said that they were going to take Alma to a separate room to get fingerprinted,” said one of her lawyers, Hamilton told the Georgia Recorder. “But what she says happened was that they immediately took her out of that waiting room, into the elevator and downstairs onto an SUV, where they promptly drove her to the Stewart Detention Center.”

The circumstances surrounding Bowman’s arrest indicate “that the decision to detain her had been made before she even arrived that day, and suggest that she was targeted, likely in part because of her advocacy work,” Vinson added.

“I am gratified that the deportation of Alma Bowman has been stayed for now. A 43-year resident of this country with compelling evidence that she is a United States citizen, Ms. Bowman is a material witness in ongoing Congressional and DHS investigations into human rights violations at the ICE Irwin County Detention Center,” Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., told The Intercept in a statement, referring to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General investigation into Irwin. “To deport her before she has been interviewed would have been a gross obstruction of justice.”

Since her initial detention, Bowman has become an immigrants’ rights advocate, both inside and outside of detention. Since being detained on March 26, Alma 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,” 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. 

“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. 

“I’m just scared,” Bowman told The Intercept about her potential deportation. “I always had this fear that I’ll lose touch with my family.”

“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.”

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