Filipino-American activist Alma Bowman paused to take a breath 10 minutes into her speech about her 40-month stay in the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Ga., less than two hours south of Mercer's campus.
The 59-year-old mother of two works alongside activist groups in Georgia to fight for the rights of migrants and undocumented residents after spending four years in the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's custody.
Bowman is one of 132,000 people awaiting immigration hearings in Georgia, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a non-profit data collection service. When her deportation order was filed in 2020, the service shows there were less than 50,000 open cases in the state.
“No matter what, I'm gonna keep fighting human rights violations,” Bowman said to the group gathered in Stetson Hall on March 27.
More than 20 people sat as Bowman told her stories about men sleeping on cell floors, pregnant women complaining of hunger, and detainees with diabetes battling high-salt diets.
Mercer Filipino Student Association President Sophia Petallar ‘26 organized the event with Bowman to educate the Mercer community on issues with ICE activity in the country.
“Our culture is not a single story, but a rich multifaceted experience shaped by our roots in the Philippines,” Petallar said.
Bowman, who has lived in Macon for almost 50 years, currently faces a deportation order from June 2020. She said The U.S. Department of Homeland Security ordered her deportation to the Philippines despite her legal residency in Macon since 1977.
How it began
Court records show Bowman pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine, according to March 2014 court records.
Bowman signed off the questionnaire with little afterthought, according to Georgia Public Broadcasting, believing that she was a U.S. citizen.
DHS claims that U.S. citizen Lawrence Bowman is not her biological father, despite her attorneys providing multiple documents supporting their relation. Before his death in 1995, Lawrence Bowman wrote in his will Bowman was his biological daughter.
Lawrence Bowman served in the Navy and was stationed in Subic Bay in Zambales, Philippines. According to his obituary, he married Bowman's mother in 1966, about a year before their daughter’s birth. The couple moved to the U.S. so Lawrence could finish his college degree.
Bowman lived with her aunt in the Philippines until her father landed a job with the Internal Revenue Services in Macon.
Then, in 2025, Bowman started her second stint in an ICE detention center as a wheelchair-bound inmate in Stewart county.
“I did my time in the state penitentiary,” Bowman said. “But, being with ICE and everything, it’s like I’ve paid my time four or five times already.”
After custody
She has advocated for the rights of U.S. immigrants since her release from ICE custody in November 2025 and at the lecture, she asked students to visit detainees and send them letters.
“It lets the people that are being detained or in prison know there are people out there that care about you,” she said. “I had 21 letters come up one time and I shared it with everyone.”
Bowman said ICE facilities bar people from social interactions.
The rooms in Stewart county held 62 beds, and the facility is often operated over capacity, according to Bowman. She said each unit only held seven phones and 15 tablets for the detainees to communicate with.
Bowman said she received an ankle monitor after a court ruled she was a “threat to society.”
“It’s not really that I hurt anybody but myself and my family,” she said. “I didn’t hurt anybody.”
Bowman said her husband “abandoned” while she was incarcerated in Irwin county. She said he was an American citizen and left when she “needed him most.”
She struggled with her mental and physical health after the loss of her marriage. She now walks with a cane occasionally and said her ankle monitor has worsened her ankle's swelling from her diabetes.
Bowman said the Philippines' embassy, one of which is located in Atlanta, offered little help in her deportation case, and she fears a future in the country.
“The Philippine embassy should be there for their people,” Bowman said. “If I go to the Philippines now, I’ll be on the streets.”
Broader tension across Georgia
Alongside at least 42 other women, Bowman fought until LaSalle Corrections, the private company that runs Irwin county’s facility, lost its contract with ICE after women reported non-consensual surgeries from the jail’s gynecologist.
Activist Kristin Bryant of Athens, Ga. drove to Mercer on Friday to hear Bowman speak.
“It feels like I’m meeting a real-life hero,” Bryant said.
She formerly worked at the University of Georgia's Fontaine Center, which advocates and provides resources for victims of sexual assault. The center is located across the street from the park on UGA’s campus where Venezuelan immigrant Jose Antonio Ibarra murdered Augusta University student Laken Riley in 2024.
Georgia passed the Laken Riley Act in January 2025, which requires ICE to detain undocumented immigrants charged with low-level, theft-related crimes.
Bryant said she left the Fontaine Center after nine years in part due to the aftermath of Riley’s murder and the federal law that was passed in her name. Riley's father has decried the use of his daughter's name for the law, telling NBC that the politicization of her name was unwanted.
“I have been sick about the Laken Riley Act. I know what stops women from getting raped and murdered, and I know what the Laken Riley Act does,” Bryant said. “It will not stop women from getting raped and murdered.”
Bryant said she spends time with the Athens Immigrant Rights Coalition and stands for the rights of migrants because, “I have, fortunately, always been able to look at people as individuals.”
Editor's note: This article originally misstated Alma Bowman's charges. She pleaded guilty to possession of methamphetamine, but did not plead guilty to possession of a firearm as a convicted felon.
Nathaniel Jordan '29 intends to major in Journalism at Mercer and hopes to work as an investigative journalist. His hobbies include poetry, photography and home cooking, and you can probably find him around Macon shopping or walking through local parks with his wife and son.
