Widow, 86, back in France after being held by ICE

Marie-Thérèse had moved to the US after reuniting with her long-lost love, an American man who died in January. Marie-Thérèse had moved to the US after reuniting with her long-lost love, an American man who died in January.

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Marie-Thérèse had moved to the US after reuniting with her long-lost love, an American man who died in January.

An 86-year-old French woman who was detained at an immigration enforcement centre in the US has returned to France, the country’s foreign minister says.

Marie-Thérèse, who is from the city of Nantes, moved to the US last year after marrying her long-lost love, Billy - an American man who died in January.

Her son sounded the alarm after his mother was arrested in Anniston, Alabama, earlier this month.

“Mum is finally free! It’s a total relief,” French outlet Ouest-France quoted him as saying following her release.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot confirmed Marie-Thérèse had arrived back in the country on Friday morning, adding: “We are pleased about that.”

The New York Times, citing one of her sons, reported that she was still dressed in her prison uniform, which was covered in stains and holes, when he and his siblings were reunited with her at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport.

“She was in a state of shock and was physically and spiritually exhausted after the ordeal,” he said.

The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the BBC earlier this week that an “illegal alien from France” matching Marie-Thérèse’s name had entered the country in June 2025 and overstayed her 90-day visa.

According to an earlier report by Ouest-France, her son said she was awaiting a green card when she was detained.

He told the paper that his mother had met Billy in the 1960s, when he was a soldier stationed at the Nato base of Saint-Nazaire and she was a secretary.

Billy later returned to the US and they lost touch, going on to marry other people and have children. The pair reconnected in 2010 and visited one another with their spouses, Ouest-France reported.

By 2022, both were widowed and started a relationship. Billy was a “charming, adorable man”, Marie-Thérèse’s son said, adding that the couple were in love “like teenagers”.

They married last year and Marie-Thérèse relocated to Alabama, applying for a green card - a long-term visa - that would grant her the right to remain in the US.

She had not yet received the green card when Billy died suddenly in January, leaving her immigration status unclear.

Shortly afterwards, one of his sons and Marie-Thérèse reportedly entered a dispute over his inheritance.

Billy’s son “threatened her, intimidated her, and even went so far as to cut off her water, internet, and electricity,” her son told Ouest-France.

Marie-Thérèse hired a lawyer but was arrested by IC

— The story of 86-year-old Frenchwoman Marie-Thérèse Ross is extraordinary. It began with an American pilot; a childhood sweetheart whom she married a year ago, 60 years after meeting him. Now, however, things have taken a turn for the worse, as the elderly woman finds herself in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, three months after becoming a widow.

She was arrested on April 1 when agents raided her home in Anniston, Alabama, where she lived with her husband. Authorities believe she is in the country illegally because she did not have a green card, the permanent residency permit, which was still being processed. Ross, originally from a town near Nantes in southern France, is being held in a detention center in Louisiana along with 70 other detainees, according to her family.

“It seems like a script from an American movie. Every morning I wake up saying this can’t be real,” her son — who prefers to remain anonymous — told the French newspaper Ouest France. He recounted to the paper the violent conditions under which his mother was arrested, despite her age and the fact that she posed no danger: “She was handcuffed and shackled like a dangerous criminal,” he lamented.

He and his two siblings were alerted to their mother’s arrest by neighbors. The woman was held incommunicado for several days until French consular services were able to contact her, visit her, and inform her family. According to diplomatic sources speaking to EL PAÍS, the French consulate in New Orleans “is closely monitoring Ms. Ross’s situation, and she has been able to immediately benefit from consular protection.”

The consulate “is in contact with her family and is maintaining close communication with U.S. ICE authorities,” these sources say, declining to provide personal details about the circumstances of the woman’s arrest or the reasons for it. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs is working to secure her release and repatriation as soon as possible.

Marie-Thérèse Ross had married a former colonel and pilot in the U.S. Army the previous year. She had met him in the late 1950s in Montoir-de-Bretagne, very close to the NATO base in Saint-Nazaire, where he was based and she worked as a secretary. He returned to the U.S., and many years later, in 2010, both married, they reconnected. The two couples saw each other occasionally. Later, both were widowed and began a relationship, traveling back and forth between France and the United States. A year ago, she d

— PARIS (AP) — French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said an 85-year-old French widow of an American military veteran who was in immigration custody in the United States returned home on Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Marie-Thérèse Ross in Alabama on April 1 after she overstayed her 90-day visa, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“She returned to France this morning, this is a satisfaction for us,” Barrot told reporters during a visit to the southern city of Montpellier on Friday.

Barrot said he would not comment on the specific case, but said some of ICE methods are “not in line” with French standards and “not acceptable to us.” Barrot referred to “violence that raised our concerns,” without elaborating.

Ross was being held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.

She was among the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda that has detained the spouses of U.S. soldiers…