A Frenchwoman who moved to the United States to marry a Vietnam war veteran she first met six decades ago returned to France Friday after she was detained by US immigration authorities, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said.
The 85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross “returned to France this morning, and we are pleased about that”, the foreign minister told reporters on a visit to the southern city of Montpellier.
She had moved to Anniston, Alabama in 2025 to marry the former Air Force colonel, and was seeking a green card, which allows people to live and work permanently in the United States.
Well, at least we didn’t shoot her in the head. That’s pretty generous of us, right?
They had met sixty years ago but married other people.
Decades later, after they were both widowed, they reconnected.
According to the New York Times, Ross gave up her life in the French city of Nantes and moved to Alabama, where the couple married in April 2025.
But the American died suddenly in January at the age of 85, throwing her immigration status into uncertainty and leading to her detention by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE).
Good for us. That’s how we do things – no fiddling around with compassion or a sense of proportion or a consideration of likely risks or their absence, just pull our socks up and throw people into the hoosgow the instant their spouses join the choir invisible.
Ross had entered the United States in June 2025 on a tourist visa that allowed her to stay for 90 days. However, she was still in the United States “seven months later,” according to US authorities.
Citing accounts from US neighbours, her son told AFP that his mother was arrested, “handcuffed and shackled”.
I repeat: that’s how we do things.
H/t Athel Cornish-Bowden
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