An 86-year-old French woman was detained by the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
Marie-Thérèse moved from France to the US territory last year, after rekindling a romance from the 1960s, and is now detained in an ICE facility in the state of Louisiana.
The son of Marie-Thérèse, originally from the city of Nantes, raised the alarm after his mother was arrested in Anniston, Alabama, in early April.
“They handcuffed his hands and feet as if it were a dangerous prison,” he told the French media. Ouest-France.
The BBC contacted the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, for comment on the case.
A long love story
Marie-Thérèse moved to the United States after meeting Billy again, an American man with whom she had no contact for 50 years, but who had been her youthful love.
The two met in the 1960s, when Billy was a soldier stationed at the NATO base in Saint-Nazaire and she was working as a secretary.
Billy returned to the United States in 1966. He and Marie-Thérèse lost contact, each married in their respective countries and had children.
However, both resumed contact in 2010 and visited each other along with their respective spouses, reported Ouest-France.
By 2022, both had become widowed and began a romantic relationship.
Billy was a “charming, adorable man,” Marie-Thérèse’s son said, and the couple were in love “as if they were teenagers.”
They married last year and Marie-Thérèse moved to Alabama, where she applied for permanent residency that would give her the right to remain in the United States.
However, she had not yet received a “green card” when Billy died suddenly in January, leaving her immigration status in limbo.
Shortly after Billy’s death, his son and Marie-Thérèse reportedly entered into a dispute over the inheritance.
Billy’s son “threatened her, intimidated her and even went so far as to cut off her water, internet and electricity supply,” her son told Ouest-France.
Marie-Thérèse hired a lawyer, but was detained by ICE the day before a scheduled hearing. The neighbors alerted their children.
There is no evidence that it was a complaint from Billy’s son that led his stepmother to an ICE detention center.
France’s intervention
The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened in the case and Marie-Thérèse has already received a consular visit, according to what her son told the French media.
He added that his mother is a “fighter who stays whole,” although she suffers from heart and back problems.
“Our priority is to get her out of this detention center and repatriate her to France. Given her health, she will not last a month in such conditions of confinement,” he stated.
Since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE has been carrying out his government’s mass deportation initiative.
Both its budget and mission have expanded significantly, and the agency plays a key role in removing undocumented migrants from the United States.
Marie-Thérèse’s son commented that her story “seemed like something out of a bad American movie.”
“Every morning I wake up and tell myself that none of this is accurate, that everything has just been a nightmare.”
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