An 85-year-old Frenchwoman was arrested on April 1st at her home in Alabama, United States, where she had been living since the spring of 2025 with her “young love,” Billy, who suddenly passed away in January 2026. She was detained for seventeen days in the cells of the American Immigration Police, ICE, before returning to France.
Far from wanting to become an icon, Marie-Thérèse Ross, 85 years old, spent seventeen days in a detention center in Louisiana after being arrested by the immigration police, ICE, in the United States. She set foot on French soil on April 17 and now wishes to be the spokesperson for her fellow detainees.
“I do not want to draw attention to myself. 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,” confided Marie-Thérèse upon her return to Nantes.
On the morning of April 1st, without even being dressed, ICE agents kicked the door in. Five agents from the much-criticized immigration police in the United States entered the Anniston, Alabama home and arrested, without further explanation, Marie-Thérèse Ross, an 86-year-old Frenchwoman living in the United States since the spring of 2025 with Billy, her “young love,” who suddenly passed away in January.
Handcuffed, chains on her ankles…
The octogenarian did not have time to explain her situation. Simply wearing her nightgown and a robe, the police handcuffed her, placed chains on her ankles.
In less time than it takes to say, she was placed in a “tiny cell.” Then, without any interrogation or other form of procedure, a captain decided to send her to a detention center. That same evening, Marie-Thérèse was sent to the prison in Birmingham, where migrants and common law prisoners are kept.
Her jailers forced her to undress in front of everyone, made her put on “a dirty, green-gray jumpsuit,” and threw her into a cell with fifteen people, including a drugged woman who screamed and another accused of murdering her husband. Marie-Thérèse was “terrified.”
Three days later, the octogenarian was transferred to a huge detention center in Basile, Louisiana, 700 km away, run by a large private American group. With only her nightie and robe, Marie-Thérèse was taken to the local airport. She waited all day in a bus parked on the tarmac with other migrants from all over the country, without water or food. “We were chained to each other, at foot level,” recalls the Frenchwoman.
At two in the morning, Marie-Thérèse and the others arrived in Louisiana and discovered the fortress. Under a metal shed, a wire mesh cell held 58 detainees. She describes “incessant noise” day and night, the screams, the smell of excrement, the six showers without curtains, the female guards who “screamed all the time,” the 4:45 a.m. wake-ups for a semblance of breakfast.
View more at: BFMTV
Denis Quette, “France-USA: Marie-Thérèse Ross, l’octogénaire françaiseexpulsée des Etats-Unis témoigne.” Ouest France, New York Times.
