85-Year-Old French Widow Held in US Immigration Detention Facility for 16 Days

ORVAULT, France: At night, silence fell over the Louisiana immigration detention facility where 85-year-old Marie-Thérèse Ross was held. Then the wailing began. ’’Children crying, and even babies,” said Ross, the French widow of a US military veteran, whose arrest last month as part of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown made international headlines. Ross spoke to The Associated Press on Monday about her 16 days in federal immigration custody after being arrested on April 1 in Alabama following an alleged visa overstay, and the late-in-life love story that brought her to the United States. She has been released and returned to France. The experience in detention, she said, changed her, and her view of politics. She was held in a dormitory-style room with 58 other women, mostly mothers. ‘’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.” Her arrest in Alabama unfolded so quickly that she barely understood what was happening. Five men, who identified themselves as immigration officers, banged on her door and windows at 8 a.m. before handcuffing her and placing her in a vehicle, she said. She was still wearing her bathrobe, slippers and pajamas.