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An 86-year-old French woman, who had been living in the United States for over a year, was arrested last April by the American immigration police. On Thursday, May 7, she recounts the brutal intervention she endured and the challenging conditions of her detention.
With courage, but still a bit fragile, Marie-Thérèse Ross-Mahé, 86, bravely tells the story of one of the worst moments of her life when the American immigration police came to arrest her.
“I heard loud bangs on the doors, the windows, etc. So at first, I wondered what it was, I was a little scared. There were five people in plain clothes. And I asked, ‘who are you?’ And they replied, ‘we are from immigration services and we want to see your identity papers,'”
said Marie-Thérèse.
Several ICE agents, the American immigration police, handcuffed her. She was taken to the Birmingham prison in Alabama. A few days later, she was transferred to a detention center in Louisiana, 700 kilometers away from her home.
“I was taken to a unit, a large room, immense, a big hangar, where there were 58 people, 58 women. I was just a number among others. There was no mercy. A lot of brutality,” she revealed.
From that day, she keeps a memory, a badge of identification. She can be seen in an orange jumpsuit, the one worn by American prisoners. 17 days of imprisonment without news from her children. “I had no contact with the outside world. I thought, do they know where I am? I didn’t know, do they know where I was? So I was completely lost. I thought, will they find me one day? How long will I stay here?” she said.
Initially, long before this arrest, there was a love story. Married since 2025 to William Ross, an American soldier, her childhood sweetheart, Marie-Thérèse decided to leave everything to settle in the United States. After her husband’s death in January, her visa expired. She was reported by one of her stepsons in an attempt to claim her inheritance. Today, it is with her children that she tries to move on.
“I think of America and Billy. And the trip we took, the good times we had together, I will hold on to that now. And try to forget Mr. Trump’s prisons,” declared Marie-Thérèse. Forgetting this sad episode and the trauma that comes with it, but Marie-Thérèse hopes to remember her fellow inmates whom she hopes will one day be released.
