ICE detained a 58-year-old Georgia resident with claims to U.S. citizenship on Wednesday

58-year-old Alma Bowman was wheeled into the Atlanta ICE Field Office by her lawyer, around 8:30am on March 26.  Alma was there for her yearly check-in with ICE; she had been released from detention in 2020, and has been coming for her routine check-ins since then.  

Despite documents showing that Alma has claims to U.S. citizenship, her lawyer, and her two grown kids, were worried of what might happen.  

It turns out they had reason to be.

Alma says she was born in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and U.S. citizen father, a claim that appears to be supported by documentation her legal team shared with 285 South. When she was 10, the family moved to Georgia. She grew up here, was married twice (both times to U.S. citizens), and has two children, John and Chris (they are also U.S. citizens), and had been living with them in Macon.

In 2017, she was reportedly taken into ICE custody following a traffic stop. She was on parole after having been in prison for a minor drug offense. Alma spent almost three years in immigration detention, during which time, she says that she had told ICE officers and immigration judges that she had claims to U.S. citizenship, but that she was ignored, according to The Intercept. During her time in detention, she also reported cases of medical abuse. She was released and reunited with her family in 2020, but with orders that she had to check in regularly with ICE.

Those check-ins had been happening as planned, until Wednesday. 

After going through security, Alma sat with Samantha Hamilton, a lawyer with Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Atlanta (AAAJA) (which has been supporting her case), in the waiting room of the ICE field office in Atlanta for about five minutes. Then, according to Ms. Hamilton, an ICE representative called Alma’s name. “They said that they’re going to take her downstairs to get fingerprinted. And I said, can I go with her? And they said, No.”

Ms. Hamilton, (who in the interests of disclosure also represents this publication), sat in the waiting room, she said, for about 30 minutes, until an ICE representative brought her into a room where a supervisor spoke to her: “he says, so we took her in today, we’re going to take her in.”

Alarmed, she responded, “You can’t do that. And they were like, why not?”  Ms. Hamilton explained that Alma, who sometimes uses a wheelchair because of her limited mobility, had chronic health conditions, and that she also had credible claims to U.S. citizenship, including a birth certificate “that says that her dad was born in Illinois and was an American citizen.”

Two ICE agents, said Ms. Hamilton, were speaking amongst themselves, and then told her that Alma had a final order of removal and a criminal record. “I just kept arguing. And they just kept saying that their hands were tied, that they couldn’t do anything.” 

A few hours later Alma’s son Chris got a call. It was Alma, calling from Stewart detention center in Lumpkin, Georgia.  

“I asked her, did they actually fingerprint you when they said they would? She was like, no, as soon as they took me  they brought me outside and they put [me] on a bus,” said Ms. Hamilton.

Speaking to 285 South on her way to Stewart on Wednesday, Ms. Hamilton said, “They just lied. It was like an open and shut thing for them.”  

285 South reached out to ICE for a response on Wednesday, March 26, and again on Friday, March 28. At the time of publication, they have shared no details of Alma’s case.

Her kids are frustrated, confused and searching for answers. “They’ve [ICE] just decided that, despite the fact that we have complied with the conditions for her to be out and not detained, she’s for some reason, detained again”, her son, John, 27, told 285 South. “Nothing has happened to change the situation, if anything, this past year, we spent hundreds of dollars to apply for her to be able to work legally. She was working, paying taxes, being part of society.”

By the time Ms. Hamilton and Alma’s kids – John and Chris, reached Stewart on Wednesday, visiting hours for family were over. Only her legal team, including Ms. Hamilton and another lawyer from AAAJA, were able to meet with Alma – who passed a note along – to give to her kids.

“In that letter,” John said, “she was more concerned about my brother and I taking care of each other, and ourselves. She was sorry that she put us in this situation. She puts others before herself all the time.”