An 86-year-old French woman who moved to Alabama to marry the American man she first loved in the 1950s is now being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Louisiana, a case that has drawn outrage in France and renewed scrutiny of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement. Family members say Marie-Thérèse Hélène Ross was arrested on April 1 and transferred to a detention center after falling out of legal status following her husband's death.
Ross had relocated from Brittany to Anniston, Alabama, last year to marry Billy, a former U.S. serviceman she met near the NATO base at Saint-Nazaire in western France decades ago. According to accounts reported by The Guardian, the two were separated in the 1960s when Billy returned to the United States and France withdrew from NATO's integrated military command.
