French woman aged 86 caught by American police for lack of a visa

Her story had resonated even within the ranks of the state. Marie-Thérèse, an 86-year-old French woman from the Nantes region, spent 17 days in American jails after being arrested on April 1 at her home in Alabama by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Released nearly two weeks later, she was able to return to France and reunite with her loved ones. The octogenarian recounted her detention to Ouest-France and The New York Times.

In an interview published this Saturday, April 25, Marie-Thérèse initially insists that she does not wish to “talk about herself.” “I want to be the spokesperson for my fellow detainees. I told them, I will speak about you so that people know what you are going through,” she said, adding that her goal was to “close these establishments.”

The octogenarian was arrested and detained in a detention center because she did not have a permanent visa. After joining her husband Billy, her “young love,” a former American soldier she met on a NATO base near Saint-Nazaire in the late 1950s, before reuniting with him in 2022, she did not have the necessary green card to stay after his death in January.

Locked up in a “fortress”

At dawn on this April 1, Marie-Thérèse recalls being awakened by kicks on the door. Five agents from the controversial immigration police came to arrest her without giving her any explanations. Despite her attempts to explain that she was not in an irregular situation, she was handcuffed and taken away, simply dressed in a nightgown and a bathrobe.

Initially placed in a “tiny cell,” the 86-year-old woman was then sent to the Birmingham prison in Alabama where migrants and common law prisoners are kept. Marie-Thérèse recounts that she was forced to undress in front of everyone and put on a “dirty grayish green jumpsuit” before being placed in a cell with about fifteen people, including a drugged woman. “I was terrified,” she recalls.

Three days later, the octogenarian learns that she is being transferred to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, more than 700 km away. Before boarding the plane that would take her there, she and other migrants spent the whole day waiting on a bus on the tarmac without water or food. “We were chained to each other at the feet,” she describes.

Her arrival at the Basile prison, a “fortress” according to her, takes place in the middle of the night. There, Marie-Thérèse joins a fenced cell with about sixty detainees. This is where she will stay until her release. Screams day and night, “smells of excrement,” showers without curtains, 4:45 AM wake-ups, refusal of medical care… The octogenarian describes horrendous detention conditions and “incessant turmoil.”

“It’s racism”

What keeps the French woman going is the “good Lord” but especially the “lovable South Americans” she is locked up with and with whom she prays and sings. “It’s thanks to them that I managed to hold on. One was arrested while driving her car, another in front of her children’s eyes, in front of the school, who have since been taken care of by one of her neighbors,” she explains.

For Marie-Thérèse, what is happening in the United States is “dreadful. Arrested because of their dark skin! It’s racism.” According to her, “arbitrary arrests, shackles on the feet, nighttime calls, clothing, orange for us migrants, green for lesbians, red for criminals, all this reminds me of the Nazi era.”

Moreover, the octogenarian believes she was denounced by her stepson, a former police officer. She resents her family above all, who “from the day after Billy’s death, made my life a living hell. They wanted to throw me out. I couldn’t mourn my husband.”

Back in the Nantes region for just ten days, Marie-Thérèse assures that she will not go back to live in the United States. “The land of freedom no longer exists,” she laments. However, she still plans to visit to pay her respects at her late husband’s grave. For that, she hopes for the “officialization” of her green card.