Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, the US immigration services
The woman was waiting for a green card when she was taken by immigration police to a detention center. The son believes that his mother will not survive a month in her current conditions.
An 86-year-old French woman who moved to the United States last year after rekindle a 1960s romance is being held in an immigration inspection center in the country.
The son of Marie-Thérèsefrom the city of Nantes, sounded the alarm after her mother was arrested in Anniston, Alabama, in early April.
“They handcuffed her hands and feet as if she were a dangerous criminal“, he told the French newspaper Ouest-France.
The US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told the BBC that a “illegal foreigner from France” with a name corresponding to Marie-Thérèse had entered the country in June 2025 and overstayed her 90-day visa.
According to her son, however, Marie-Thérèse waiting for a green card to be issued [um visto de longo prazo] when she was detained.
lost love
Marie-Thérèse moved to the USA after marry your lost love of decades — an American named Billy, whom she met in the 1960s, when he was a soldier stationed at the NATO base in Saint-Nazaire and she was a secretary.
Billy returned to the USA in 1966. He and Marie-Thérèse lost contact, each married in their own country and had children.
Both reconnected in 2010 and began visiting each other with their respective spouses, reported Ouest-France.
In 2022, they were both widowed and began a relationship. Billy was a “charming, lovely” man, said Marie-Thérèse’s son, and the couple were in love “like teenagers”.
They got married last year and Marie-Thérèse moved to Alabama, applying for a green card, which would give her the right to stay in the US.
But she had not yet received the visa when Billy died suddenly in January, leaving his immigration status undefined.
Shortly after Billy’s death, his son and Marie-Thérèse reportedly clashed over the inheritance.
Billy’s son “threatened her, intimidated her, and even came to cut off the supply of water, internet and electricity“, her son told Ouest-France.
Marie-Thérèse hired a lawyer, but was arrested by ICE the day before a scheduled hearing. Neighbors alerted their children.
There is no evidence that a complaint made by Billy’s son took his stepmother to an ICE detention center.
The French Foreign Ministry is involved, and Marie-Thérèse has received a consular visit, her son told French media. He added that his mother was a “fighter” and was “holding up well” but that she had heart and back problems.
“Our priority is take her out of that detention center and repatriate her to France. Given her health, she will not last a month in detention conditions like these,” he said.
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term as President, ICE has assumed a central role in execution of the mass deportation initiative of your government.
Its budget and mission have been significantly expanded, and the agency plays a key role in removing undocumented immigrants from the United States.
Marie-Thérèse’s son said her story “was like a bad American movie. Every morning I wake up and tell myself that none of this is true, that it was just a nightmare.”
