Marie-Thérèse, 86 years old, from the Nantes region, recently spent 17 days in a detention center in Louisiana, United States, after being abruptly arrested by ICE, the controversial American immigration police. Back on French soil since April 17, she speaks out to tell her story and that of her fellow detainees. “I don’t want to make it about me. I want to be the spokesperson for my fellow detainees. I told them: I will speak about you so people know what you are going through. My goal is to close these establishments,” she declares to our colleagues at Ouest France and the New York Times.
Arrested like a dangerous criminal
It’s an old story that led Marie-Thérèse from Pays de la Loire to Alabama. In the 1950s, she meets Billy Ross, an American soldier, at a NATO base near Saint-Nazaire. The two young people lose touch before reuniting decades later. She eventually moves to the United States with him. But after her husband’s death in January 2026, her immigration status became irregular due to a lack of a permanent resident card.
On April 1st, she was then arrested by ICE agents at her home in Alabama. Without any explanation, she was handcuffed and taken away, simply dressed in a nightgown and a robe, like a dangerous criminal, handcuffed and chained.
She was first placed in a “tiny cell” and then sent to Birmingham prison in Alabama, where migrants and regular prisoners are imprisoned. She was forced to undress in front of everyone, put on a “dirty green overalls,” and thrown into a cell with fifteen other people, including a drugged woman and another accused of killing her husband. “I was terrified,” she recalls.
One after the other
Three days later, Marie-Thérèse was transferred to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, 700 kilometers away. She had to wait all day on a bus with other migrants, without water or food, chained to each other at the feet.
In this “fortress prison,” she was placed in a cell with sixty other inmates. She described the incessant noise day and night, the screams, the smell of excrement, the six showers without curtains, the guards who “yelled all the time,” and getting up at 4:45 for what looked like a small breakfast. She said she held on thanks to the “lovely South Americans” with whom she prayed and sang.
“This all reminds me of the Nazi era”
Since her return to France, she remains shocked by this traumatic experience. “It’s horrible. Arrested because of their dark skin! It’s racism,” she laments, referring to the situation of her fellow detainees. “The arbitrary arrests, the chains at the feet, the calls in the middle of the night, the attire, orange for us migrants, green for homosexuals, red for criminals, all of this reminds me of the Nazi era,” she adds.
A parallel to history that she also reflects on in relation to her situation. The octogenarian believes she was reported to the police by her stepson, a former police officer. “From the day after Billy’s death, they made my life hell. They wanted to kick me out. I couldn’t mourn my husband,” she recounts.
Since her return to the Nantes region, Marie-Thérèse is trying to slowly recover from this terrible ordeal. One thing is certain: she will never live in the United States again, but hopes to return to visit her late husband’s grave.
