This story was provided by WABE media partner 285 South.
Alma Bowman walked out of the ICE field office on Ted Turner Drive on Tuesday morning with a big smile. “My heart is just like going boom, boom, boom right now,” she said. “I’m overwhelmed.”
Eight months ago, Alma had walked into the same building, only to find herself loaded onto a bus and driven to the Stewart Detention Facility in Lumpkin, where she spent the next eight months locked up.
Born in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and an American father, Alma moved to Georgia when she was 10 and has documents showing her claims to American citizenship. Still, following a traffic stop in 2017, she spent nearly three years in immigrant detention. She was released in 2020, but was ordered to attend regular check-ins with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
It was at one of those appointments, on March 26th this year, that she was detained.
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