A French woman, 85 years old, living in Alabama, faced directly with ICE’s immigration police methods.
Back in France now, she tells her nightmare story on TF1 News.
For sixteen days, Marie-Thérèse Ross lived in American prisons. “I still have some nightmares from time to time, but I will try to start living quietly again, to forget what I experienced,” she says in the above report. Since a year ago, she had been living in Alabama, perfectly integrated into local life, until that brutal awakening on April 1st. “It was 8 in the morning and I heard loud banging on the doors, on the windows,” she recounts. Five ICE agents, the American immigration police, came to arrest her.
Common rights were in yellow, those were dangerous, and the red ones were the ones who had killed.
Common rights were in yellow, those were dangerous, and the red ones were the ones who had killed.
Marie-Thérèse Ross
Despite her age, 85, she was taken in pajamas to a first detention center, handcuffed at the hands and feet. “I couldn’t get into the truck, they lifted me like a sack of potatoes,” she recalls. She was accused of living three months without a visa last year, until she received her permanent resident card. Marie-Thérèse had just rebuilt her life with William Ross, her childhood sweetheart whom she met in France in 1958. William passed away in January. Three months later, one of Marie-Thérèse’s stepsons denounces her to the police, unable to bear that she would inherit.
In detention, the Frenchwoman was called by the number of her bed. “Unit Bravo Charlie L30, that was me,” she says. In her cell, she lived with about fifty women, all considered illegal like her. Each prisoner is sorted by color. “I was in orange, there were others in yellow, and others in red. Common law ones were in yellow, those who were dangerous, and the red ones were the ones who had killed,” she specifies.
Lire aussi
“Sors-moi de là” : arrested near Minneapolis by ICE, a 10-year-old girl detained for a month in Texas
Her ordeal ended on April 17, thanks in part to the mobilization of her children. Her son, Hervé Goix, testifies to her resilience. “She still amazes me in the way she manages. We feel like she has come out, that not much has happened physically, but I think morally it’s difficult,” he admits. As for Marie-Thérèse, she thinks of “those who are still there”. “It’s my goal, it’s to get them out of there,” she asserts. Marie-Thérèse now lives in France, but she hopes to be able to return to the United States, pay her respects at her husband’s grave.
