ORVAULT, France — The son of an 85-year-old French widow who married an American military veteran but was later detained for overstaying her visa says she now needs rest after the ordeal.
Speaking to reporters Friday after Marie-Thérèse Ross returned to France, Hervé Goix, said the family’s “absolute priority” is to protect her.
“To preserve her health and her rest, and for her to be able to rebuild herself,” Goix told a press conference alongside his two siblings in the town of Orvault, in western France.
“We are particularly relieved today to see our mother again, to have her back,” he said. “She has necessarily gone through a difficult ordeal.”
Ross returned to France after a harrowing 16 days spent in federal immigration custody, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said on Friday. Without elaborating, Barrot said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement methods were “not in line” with French standards and “not acceptable to us.”
Ross entered the U.S. last June after marrying a retired U.S. soldier who had been stationed in her home country in the 1960s, court records show. But after her husband died of natural causes in January, a dispute arose over his estate. Ross’ stepson – a U.S. federal employee – allegedly intervened to have her taken into immigration custody, an Alabama judge found.
Federal immigration agents detained Ross in Alabama on April 1 after she overstayed her 90-day visa, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She was then held at a detention facility in Louisiana as French officials expressed concern about her well-being.
Goix, who told The Associated Press that she had been in the process of applying for a green card when she was taken into custody, added during the press conference that “the essential thing is that she is truly safe, that she regains her comfort, that she is surrounded by her children and grandchildren.”
The mayor of Orvault, Sébastien Arrouët, told French media he spoke with Ross and said “she is delighted, she is happy, she is relieved.”
“Put yourselves in her place, in a country she knows a little bit, it all happened to her so suddenly,” he said. “We don’t realize the psychological violence. She needs to process all this, and the most important thing is that she is back with us.”
Ross was taken into custody in her nightgown and was unable to bring her phone, passport and other identification with her, records show.
