The American left divided over ICE: “To some, eliminating them would be like getting rid of the army!”
Authorities offer an administrative explanation: she arrived in June 2025 with a 90-day tourist visa and was still on the territory “seven months later”. Since then, she returned to France on April 18. She has hired a lawyer to try to obtain permanent residency and highlights a document issued by the Ministry of Defense as the spouse of a former combatant, consulted by the New York Times.
Migrants treated “like dogs”
During her arrest, she passed through several centers. First Birmingham: “fifteen” detainees per cell, she says. Then Basile, in Louisiana, 700 kilometers away. There, she speaks of a “fortress”. “Terrible screams” at all hours and a “smell of excrement,” she describes in Ouest-France. She also claims she was not treated for an “acute sciatic crisis.”
But beyond her detention conditions, it is the overall treatment of migrants considered “like dogs” that she denounces. “Arbitrary arrests, chains on the feet, calls in the middle of the night, the attire, orange for us migrants, green for homosexuals, red for criminals, all of this reminds me of the times of Nazism,” she says.
Minneapolis, the population’s war of attrition against ICE: “We will stay until they leave”
A heavy and acknowledged comparison but also a personal reassessment as, until now, Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé supported Donald Trump and his migration policy. “I didn’t think such places existed,” she tells the New York Times.
“I will speak so that people know”
Today, she wants to testify for others: “I want to be the spokesperson for my fellow detainees. I told them: ‘I will speak about you so that people know what you are going through.’ My goal is to close these establishments.”
The New York Times specifies that it could not independently verify every detail of her story, while noting that it aligns with other similar testimonies.
“They are out of control”: in the United States, immigration police ICE worries
Asked by the newspaper, the Department of Homeland Security defends ICE centers, asserting that they adhere to strict standards and are subject to regular checks.
These structures, however, remain under pressure. They are regularly criticized, especially after the deaths of two Americans killed in January by federal agents in Minneapolis.
