The story of the Frenchwoman Marie-Thérèse Ross, 86 years old, is unusual. It started with an American pilot, a youthful love with whom she married a year ago, 60 years after meeting him. And now it has become complicated, as the octogenarian is in a detention center of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), three months after becoming a widow.
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She was detained on April 1, when agents raided her home in Anniston, Alabama, where she lived with her husband. They consider that she is in the country irregularly because she did not have the green card, the permanent residence permit, which was in process. The Frenchwoman, originally from a village near Nantes, in western France, is locked up in a detention center in Louisiana along with 70 other detainees, according to her family’s complaint.
“It looks like a scene from an American movie. Every morning I get up saying this can’t be true,” her son — who prefers not to make his name public — told the French newspaper Ouest France. He recounted to that newspaper the violent conditions in which his mother was arrested, despite her age and not posing any danger: “She was handcuffed hands and feet like a dangerous criminal,” he lamented.
Her other two brothers and he were alerted of her detention by neighbors. The woman was incommunicado for several days until the French consular services could contact her, visit her, and inform the family. According to diplomatic sources explaining to this newspaper, the French consulate in New Orleans “is closely monitoring Mrs. Ross’s situation, who has been able to immediately benefit from the protection of consular services.”
The consulate “is in contact with her family and maintains close communication with the U.S. ICE authorities,” these sources say, who do not want to give personal details about the circumstances of the woman’s arrest or the reasons. Foreign Affairs is working to get her out of there and repatriate her as soon as possible.
Marie Thérèse R. had married last year an ex-colonel and American army pilot whom she met in late 1950 in Montoir-de-Bretagne, very close to the NATO base in Saint-Nazaire, where he worked as a soldier and she as a secretary. He returned to the U.S. and many years later, in 2010, both already married, they reconnected. The two couples saw each other from time to time. Then both were widowed and formalized a relationship, with trips back and forth between France and the United States. A year ago, she decided to move to Alabama, where she applied for a permanent residence card.
They married in April 2025. Her husband died last January. According to her son’s account, his wife had planned to return to France at the end of this month, but stayed in the U.S. to first resolve the inheritance paperwork. According to the complaint, her husband’s son “had threatened her to the point of cutting off her electricity and water.” “It is urgent to get her out of the detention center and bring her to France,” the man explains, recalling that his mother suffers from heart problems and that her health is delicate. “She won’t endure those conditions.”
