Marie-Thérèse Ross’s first night inside the Louisiana immigration detention center was met with a sound she has not been able to shake: the wails of children. “Children crying, and even babies,” she told The Associated Press in an interview conducted after her release and return to France. For 16 days, the 85-year-old widow of a U.S. military veteran was held alongside 58 other women, most of them mothers, in a dormitory-style room where “silence came” only in the brief moments before the crying started again.
Ross, who was arrested on April 1 at her home in Anniston, Alabama, over an alleged visa overstay, described an ordeal that began with five officers banging on her door and windows at 8 a.m., handcuffing her while she was still in her bathrobe, pajamas and slippers. She was transferred two days later to a facility in Basile, Louisiana. Her detention made international headlines after the French government intervened. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot issued a public call for her release, declaring that the methods used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are “not in line” with French standards. Ross was freed later in April and has been recovering with family in the Nantes suburb in western France.
The arrest followed a dispute over the estate of her husband, William B. Ross, a retired U.S. soldier whom she had met in the 1950s when he was stationed in France and she worked as a secretary at NATO. They stayed in touch for decades through William’s then-wife and, after both became widowed, rekindled a romance and married in 2024. Ross moved to the United States to live with him. When William died of natural causes in January, a disagreement with his sons emerged. According to an Alabama judge’s court order, the stepbrothers rerouted mail from the residence, causing Ross to miss an immigration-related appointment, and the judge accused one son—a former Alabama State Trooper who now works as a federal employee—of using his position to prompt his stepmother’s detention. The son has denied involvement; Ross described the relationship as warm before William’s death but said the sons “transformed” afterward.
Inside the Louisiana facility, Ross said the conditions were hygienic—the prison was clean, the food adequate—but the treatment of detainees was degrading. “The guards could not speak without yelling,” she said. Strict rules and condescending language governed daily life. Yet amid the noise and fear, Ross witnessed moments of solidarity. At night, if her blanket slipped, she felt “a small hand putting it back,” a gesture from a fellow detainee she never identified. The women called her “Grandma.” She keeps a handmade friendship bracelet woven from colored plastic strips, given to her by another detainee, which she still wears.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that Ross had overstayed her 90-day visa and that ICE facilities “are regularly audited and inspected” to comply with national standards. “All detainees are provided with proper meals, quality water, blankets, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers,” the department said, adding that “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens.”
Ross’s family said she is still experiencing memory gaps and emotional distress consistent with post-traumatic stress and is seeking medical follow-up in France. She said she continues to think about the women she met in custody, most of them from South America, many mothers who did not know where their children were. “I think it’s terrible for a woman not to know where her children are,” she said.
Her husband was a Trump supporter, and they used to watch Fox News together, Ross said. But after seeing the inside of an immigration detention center, her view changed. She had believed the United States was a “country of freedom, where people are not arrested based on how they look, and where those who are detained are treated fairly and with respect.” The women she met, she concluded, did not deserve to be detained. “Their only fault was to be South American.”
Before she left the facility, Ross made a promise to the women she left behind. “I told them that if I ever had the chance to speak about them, I would do it, to help them,” she said. With her interview this week, she said, she is trying to keep that promise.