85-Year-Old Widow of U.S. Military Veteran Describes Her Heartbreaking Time in ICE Detention

When 85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross crossed the Atlantic Ocean to be with the man she loved, she could never have imagined that months later she would be sleeping in a dormitory with 58 other women, listening to babies cry through the night in a Louisiana detention facility.

Ross, a French widow and the new wife of a retired U.S. Army veteran, was arrested on April 1 in Anniston, Alabama, following an alleged visa overstay. Five men identifying themselves as immigration officers arrived at her door at 8 a.m., banging on windows, handcuffing her, and placing her in a vehicle before she had time to change out of her bathrobe, slippers, and pajamas. She spent the next 16 days in federal immigration custody — first briefly in Alabama, then at a facility in Basile, Louisiana — before being released and returning to France.

What She Saw Inside

But what Marie-Thérèse encountered inside those detention center walls is a heartbreaking story — one she promised the women around her she would tell if she ever had the chance.

The dormitory held 58 women, most of them mothers. Many did not know where their children were. "Some of them didn't know where their children were," she said. "I think it's terrible for a woman not to know where her children are."

Nights were the hardest. "Everybody was talking loudly so everybody could hear what they were saying, but when silence came, you could hear children crying and even babies crying," she said. "There's babies in this jail."

She described strict rules, guards who communicated through shouting, and a pervasive sense of indignity. "The prison was clean, the food was OK, but it was the way they spoke to us," she said. "The guards could not speak without yelling."

Kindness in the Darkness

Even in the most difficult circumstances, grace found its way through. The women around Marie-Thérèse, most of them younger South American mothers navigating a frightening situation in a foreign language, looked after the elderly French widow in their midst. They called her "Grandma."

"During the night, if my bed cover slipped away, I felt a small hand putting it back," she said. "I didn't know who it was, but they pampered me because I was older than them."

One woman wove her a friendship bracelet from strips of colored plastic. Marie-Thérèse still wears it today.

Scripture reminds us that when we care for the stranger, the vulnerable, and the least among us, we reflect the image of God. In that Louisiana facility, it was the women with the least power who quietly demonstrated what that looks like in practice.

Changed by What She Witnessed

Marie-Thérèse has returned to France, where she is recovering at her family's home near Nantes. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot publicly called for her release, saying that ICE methods are "not in line" with French standards. Her family says she is still experiencing memory gaps and emotional distress. She is seeking medical follow-up for symptoms consistent with post-traumatic stress.

Her view of the United States has shifted. Before her arrest, she believed the U.S. 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."

What she witnessed changed that. The women she shared a room with, she said, did not deserve to be there. "Their only fault was to be South American."

She thinks of them still. Before she left the facility, she made them a promise.

"When I left this jail in Louisiana, I told them that if I ever had the chance to speak about them, I would do it, to help them."

She is keeping that promise now.