French officials have said they are pressing the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to release 86-year-old French citizen Marie-Thérèse Ross, who has been held in a Louisiana detention centre since April 1 after being arrested by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
The 86-year-old has been living in the US since last year but said she was planning to return to France following the death of her US veteran husband in January.
The French government has “fully mobilised” to push for Ross’s release, Rodolphe Sambou, Consul General of France in New Orleans, told the Associated Press.
“Given her age, we really want her to get out of this situation as soon as possible,” Sambou said. “We want to get her out of jail.”
Sambou said he has visited Marie-Therese in detention twice so far and has been communicating frequently with her family and French officials in the US to try and coordinate her release and ensure she has access to sufficient food and health care.
Long-lost sweethearts
“They handcuffed her hands and feet like she was a dangerous criminal,” one of Marie-Thérèse’s sons told French newspaper Ouest-France last week. “It’s like the plot of a bad American movie. Every morning, I wake up telling myself it’s not real, that I had a nightmare.”
He said that his mother was “holding up well” in detention and was a “force of nature”, but that she had heart and back problems.
Marie-Thérèse moved to the US last year after rekindling a romance with her long-lost sweetheart; US military veteran Billy Ross, who she had met in the 1960’s while he was stationed at the NATO base in the west-coast town of Saint-Nazaire.
Marie-Thérèse and Billy lost touch after he returned to France in 1966, and both got married to other people and had children.
They reconnected via social media in 2010 and started a relationship in 2022 after both of their spouses had died.
The pair married in 2025, and Marie-Thérèse relocated to Alabama where she applied for a Green Card, which would grant her permanent residence in the States.
Billy was "a charming, adorable man. They were like a couple of teenagers", Marie-Thérèse's son said.
When Billy died in January 2026, Marie-Thérèse’s Green Card had not yet arrived.
She was arrested by ICE agents on April 1 in her home in the small town of Anniston and is now being held in a Louisiana detention centre with 70 other detainees.
An aerial photo of the Winn Correctional Center, an ICE detention facility, in Winnfield, Louisiana on April 9, 2025. © Gerald Herbert, AP
Her return to France is “urgent” her son said. “Given her health, she won’t last a month in such conditions.”
'Illegal alien'
Marie-Thérèse has not been able to contact her children directly since being detained. Her neighbours alerted her children that she had been arrested.
Her son alleged that one of Billy’s children informed ICE that Marie-Thérèse was living in the US without a Green Card during a dispute over Billy’s inheritance.
At one point, Billy’s son had “cut off her water, internet, and electricity”, he told Ouest-France.
Marie-Thérèse hired a lawyer but was arrested days before a scheduled hearing.
A spokesperson from ICE confirmed to multiple media outlets that Marie-Thérèse had been arrested as an “illegal alien”.
“She last entered the country in June 2025 under the Visa Waiver Program, which permitted her to remain in the country for 90 days. Seven months later, she is still illegally in the United States,” it said in a statement.
It added that the US now offers illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight if they self deport.
Marie-Thérèse had written in a Facebook post that she was planning to leave the US and return to France at the end of April.
ICE arrest quotas
Shortly after US President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025 increased national quotas for ICE agents to make up to 3,000 arrests a day, where previously the agency had arrested a few hundred.
The Washington Post reported in January that ICE agents were “under pressure” to meet the quota, and “were rewarded for making arrests”, even if those arrested were later released.
The DHS has denied that ICE agents are paid a bonus for meeting arrest targets.
Other international travellers have been detained for extended periods by ICE when trying to leave the US, after being turned back by Canadian border guards.
Among these were French citizen Julien Pereira, a tennis club manager living in Connecticut.
He told FRANCE 24 he was held in an ICE centre for three days where detainees had to “sleep practically on the floor, without a shower, and the lights on continuously, no windows and very little to eat.”
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© France 24
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Pereira was detained for a month in total, before he left the US.
However, it is unusual for French citizens to be arrested by the agency. ICE Data from 2025 shows the overwhelming majority its arrests were of people from Central and South America.
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