"They treat immigrants like dogs, I thought I would die in their hands," declared the French Marie-Thérèse Helene Ross, 86 years old, when describing her ordeal of 16 days in an Alabama prison after being handcuffed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for violating the 90-day stay permit in the United States.
"I didn't think these things existed, I thought once detained they were treated properly, but I was shocked," she reveals in a letter published by the New York Times, a week after her repatriation to France following the direct intervention of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, who expressed concern about the "violence" with which she was detained and imprisoned.
Marie-Thérèse was reported to immigration police by her son-in-law, following the death in January of her husband, war veteran Bill Ross, the love of her youth when they both worked at a NATO base in Europe and whom she reunited with and married almost six decades later. The legal dispute over the inheritance was, according to her, the trigger for her detention.
"I was dressed in a bathrobe, pajamas, and slippers when they knocked on the door," she recounts in her letter. "I really didn't understand what was happening to me. It was very humiliating... I didn't even have time to comb my hair, they handcuffed me by the wrists and ankles."
During the 16 days she spent in prison, she thought she was going to die and never leave her cell. She had trouble communicating with the outside world because they took away her late husband's American phone that she still had. She finally managed to speak with her son and the consulate in New Orleans with her French mobile phone, and that's how her story became public.
Her time in prison worsened her back pain and sciatica, to the point where she could hardly move. She was finally able to shower and receive minimal care "thanks to the kindness of other women" detained with her. At the first medical check-up upon leaving prison, she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. Her son claims she also has symptoms of senile dementia.
"I didn't think they were capable of doing something like this," writes the French citizen, who does not hide that she admired Donald Trump, perhaps influenced by her husband. She assures that her arrest was likely orchestrated by her late husband's younger son from a previous marriage, who works as a security guard in the courts.
Marie Thérèse states that her husband applied for her permanent residency and was processing it through an immigration office in Anniston, Alabama, where she was still living in their marital home. The American authorities detained her as an "undocumented foreigner" after exceeding the 90-day tourist stay.