US EditionFrench Woman, 86, Held by ICE After Moving to US to Reunite with Long-Lost Love
France says the 86-year-old widow’s detention threatens her health as her family seeks repatriation and ICE cites an overstay.
- On April 1, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 86-year-old French widow Marie-Therese Helene Ross in Alabama for overstaying her 90-day visa; she remains held at a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana.
- Ross moved to the United States in 2025 to marry William Ross, a U.S. Army veteran, after the couple reconnected on social media following their separation in the 1960s when France withdrew from NATO's integrated military command structure.
- Her son told Ouest-France that agents 'handcuffed her hands and feet like she was a dangerous criminal,' while family members expressed concern over her heart and back health problems during detention.
- Consul General Rodolphe Sambou told the Associated Press the French government has "fully mobilized" to secure her release, with officials in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Paris coordinating with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
- Ross is among thousands targeted by the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda, which now detains spouses of U.S. veterans who previously received leniency under scrapped policies.
84 Articles
84 Articles
Marie-Thérèse Ross was arrested in Alabama on April 1 for exceeding the length of her 90-day visa. She is one of the thousands of people targeted by the Trump administration's massive expulsion program.
Marie-Thérèse Helene Ross, an 86-year-old French woman who lost her American husband in January, was arrested on April 1 by the Immigration Control Service and...
The woman's residence permit had expired and her application for a green card was still being processed.
She had gone to the United States to marry a man she had known in the fifties: France is pushing to free her
The French government makes pressure on the U.S. Department of Internal Security (DHS) to release a prisoner from the detention centre for immigrants on a French visa at the age of 86 of a military veteran, after which it was held at the beginning of this month, writes The Guardian.
The story of the 86-year-old French Marie-Thérèse Ross is unusual. She began with an American pilot, a love of youth she married a year ago, 60 years after she met him. And now she has become complicated, because the octogenarian is in a detention center of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), three months after she became a widow. Continue reading
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